Persephone and Hades
by Kali-Red
Summary: Jack would be better off if she were still dead, but Lord Marshal Riddick has other plans for her. Sequel to COR. This is a raw, disturbing story, rated M for violence, sexual content, bad language, and a worse attitude.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: None of the characters belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.

**WARNING**: This is a NOT NICE story, marked Mature for sexual content and violence. If you don't like smut, or reading about sex or violence or violent sex or sexual violence, PLEASE DON'T READ THIS. It's not for the squeamish or the prudish.

Background: This was written after a discussion among friends in which it was suggested that a lot of the Pitch Black/Riddick fanfic is written in such a way as to make Riddick out to be a nice guy at heart. A killer with a hert of gold. One friend said, "Either he's a dangerous, violent sociopath and everyone is right to be afraid of him, or he's just a poser." No one agreed over which he was, but I came away with a challenge: to write the smutty sequel to Chronicles of Riddick and not to wimp out. My assignment was to keep him as a man who is so dangerous, evil, and dark that the Helions wanted, needed, him to fight the Necromongers. I was charged to keep him a "dangerous, violent sociopath." He is. The friend who originally gave me the challenge called the end product "appalling but fascinating." Consider yourself warned.

Soundtrack: I recommend Rammstein--that's what I wrote it to.

**If you enjoy this, please review and let me know what you liked.**

* * *

**ONE**

I bring her back from the Underverse. Pull her soul raw and gasping across the Threshhold, and carry her like a white hot seed inside me until I think it's going to consume me. To make it happen, I tear at the world, pollute and bring havoc. The Necromongers put her back into flesh. Her own skin, but new. They don't have a choice. They're more afraid of me than they are of their god. They see me as their annihilating savior, but it's only for her. Their destruction, their Underverse, their god, their souls, so much shit and nothing.

I don't see her reborn, even though I've carried her back. Nothing a man would want to see done to the woman he loves, they say. Is that what she is? The woman I love? Or just the woman I'm willing to destroy the world to get back? Maybe it's the same thing. I believe when I hear her screams coming from the darkest place I've ever gone. Her screams running up from deep chambers, into the throne room, like wolves sated on blood but still hungry for death.

I'm a patient man. I run planets and galaxies through my hourglass waiting for her. When they bring her to me, she's new and awkward in her body, moving stilted between two attendants, like a princess out of some goddamned fairy tale, woken after a thousand-year sleep. Her skin is like a baby's, never touched by the sun, unmarked, all the scars undone. She's alabaster statuary, her hair coiled like sunning snakes on her head. Her attendants step back, leave her swaying in front of me, and the court gathers around to see, to witness the Lord Marshal's approval.

Only when I get close, so close I can smell her, do I see the life in her eyes. It's brutal. Her flesh may be new, but her eyes are full of ghosts—mine, hers, every ghost, every betrayal. Like a shine job on the soul. She can see me, the way no one else ever has. She can see into me. And it's like some part of me has gone missing and she has it. Whatever part of me she has, though, she's mine now.

Made for me. Dead for me. Reborn for me.

I rape her there on the floor of the throne room to an audience of hundreds. Tearing at that ridiculous dress constricting her. Clutching, clawing, my mouth on hers, ravaging. Trying to consume all of her, the haunting ghosts in her eyes, the new flesh of her throat and breasts, her her her. Devour her. To take her into me and keep her there.

When it's done, I'm cock-deep in the blood between her thighs, and fat, hot tears tumble out of the corners of her eyes faster than I can catch them. Her eyes aren't full of ghosts anymore and I'm finally the monster they always said I was.

"Sorry, kid," I say. She didn't even fight me.

I'm not sorry I did it. I'm sorry I didn't do it sooner. That I didn't do it on Crematoria. Didn't do it on T2, when she smelled of the sweet taint of puberty and menstrual blood. Should have fucked her then and fed her to the monsters, exorcised whatever hold she has on me now.

Standing over us, looking at what I've done, Vaako says, "She is the Lord Marshal's to do with as he pleases."

I'm going to kill him slowly.

* * *

"Keep her away from me," he said, when they carried her out of the throne room, but he didn't mean forever. He came for her again. Again. Again. Again.

Through repetition, it got less painful, the act itself, him forcing his way into her. After that, he seemed to pride himself on finding ways to augment the pain, to make up for the familiarity of that particular stabbing sensation. He bit her, pinched her, slapped her, bruised her to the bone with his bare hands, choked her, found new and ugly ways to violate her, used his shiv to cut her open and drink her blood. Jack wondered if he wanted to kill her and couldn't bring himself to do it. Or if he just wanted it to last longer. Worse, she wanted him to finish her, return her to the sterile, emptiness of the Underverse, but he never did.

Instead, every time, he disentangled himself from her, pulled up his pants—he never bothered to take them off, or his shirt or his boots—and left. At the door to her room, her prison, he always said the same thing to her attendants: "Get the doctor."

Each time the doctor came and did whatever needed to be done. A week later, there would be no sign. No proof. Nothing to remind her in daylight. He stayed away for weeks after each visit, to let her heal or to save up his fury. From her two dead-eyed attendants, Jack learned the names of the worlds being Converted. The worlds he was destroying. The Lord Marshal, they called him, in a little whisper of awe. She never called him that. Never spoke about him at all. Never asked where he was. She got stronger, slowly recovering the things the Underverse had stripped from her. Remembering things. Imam. Monsters. Him. He'd kept what he killed and that included her.

The memories came in dreams, and she had long since lost any sense of day and night. The lights were brighter in the day, she supposed, and at night they only allowed her a small yellow bulb that cast a circle against darkness. They only gave it to her because the doctor was worried that she didn't sleep. Couldn't sleep in the dark. Always, when she woke in the dark, something was there. A monster waiting. A woman she'd been made to call "Mommy." Some quick-slithering, flapping, sharp-toothed hungry thing. Or _him_.

Riddick. She'd finally remembered who he was.

The next time she woke up in the black, she smelled him. He had turned off her light, put her in darkness. Sitting up in bed, she said, "Riddick," testing it in her dry mouth and gagging over it. That was what had allowed him to drag her back into life. The way her dead heart leapt at his name.

"Jack. I was starting to think you'd forgotten my name," he said, and then she remembered the grin. Handsome. She had thought he was handsome. How long ago was that? How long had it been since she looked at him and thought he was handsome?

"My name isn't Jack. It's—." She hesitated. What was it? "My name is Kyra."

"I don't think it is. When I stood at the Threshold and called you, you answered to Jack."

"You—you brought me back. I was in the empty place and you made me come back."

"Say my name again," he said. It sounded like a question instead of an order.

"No." It had betrayed her once already.

The bed shifted under his weight as he stretched out beside her. One of his heavy boots scraped against her bare ankle and she jerked in surprise. She tried to move away from him, but he caught her wrist and pulled her against him, his hand twisting a burning stripe on her skin.

"Put the light on," she said.

"Since when do you tell me what to do?" His other hand explored the neck of her nightgown, then abruptly gathered a fistful of fabric and tore it open.

"Please," she said.

"Please what? Say my name."

She didn't want to say it, but she wanted the light. Needed the light, that little glowing circle to keep back the monsters. Wanted it so badly that she forced the word past the knot in her throat. "Please, Riddick, the light."

"Let there be light," he said, laughing low in his throat. He rolled away from her and the lamp cast back the black. He stood over her, his hand on his belt.

She looked at him closely, filling in the gaps in her memories. The shape of his shoulders, the way his hands moved, that darkling spark in his eyes. He reached for the torn edge of her nightgown and with one stroke, ripped it the rest of the way. The other hand drew his belt out slowly. Holding it by the buckle, he shook it out.

"Who's in charge here?" he said in a sinister voice.

* * *

When he put the first stripe on her with the belt, she made a small hiccupping noise but didn't try to get away. She was quiet after that, took it all in silence, her head turned so that she could look at the pool of light she'd begged for. There were moments he wasn't sure she knew he was there, fucking her. When he finished, he pulled his pants up and put his belt on. He stood over her and considered the shape of her—small on that bed—and the amount of blood on the sheets. Nothing serious; she didn't even need the doctor tonight.

"Why did you bring me back?" she said.

"I wasn't done with you."

"You could have just raped my corpse," she said. "Saved us both a lot of trouble."

She lay on her side, facing the light, but her face was covered. Leaning over her, he smoothed back her sweat-matted hair, looked at her closely. Her eyes were empty, gazing far away, but she was actually smiling. She'd made a joke. As fast as it came, the smile left.

"When will you be done with me?"

"Never," he said.

He didn't know if it was true, if that gnawing thing in him might not eventually burn out, but he liked how scared she looked when he said it. Made his cock hard again when her blood on him wasn't even dry. He stroked her bare ass, welted and bruised, and fingered the cut under her right shoulder blade, deeper than he'd thought. Maybe the doctor after all.

"When you're done destroying the world? Will you be done with me then?" Was that another joke?

"Is that why you're looking forward to the end of the world?" he said.

"I didn't know I was. I've forgotten some things, but I remember I died trying to help you save the world. Wasn't that what I died for? Didn't I die to help you kill the Lord Marshal? Not to make you the Lord Marshal."

"Was that it? I thought you died because you loved me."

"Something like that would kill a person," she said and met his gaze. The thing was there again, in her eyes. The part of him that she had. Sometimes he liked seeing it in her eyes, but most of the time he wanted to get it back. That was when the urge to hurt her was strongest.

She didn't flinch when he sat back down on the bed, and she kept her eyes on him as he ran his rough hands in slow circles over her breasts. Her nipples rose, went hard and he caught them between his fingers, squeezed. He took one into his mouth, rolled it under his tongue, stroking it and then sucking. Going to the other one, he did the same, and for several moments he moved back and forth between them. He indulged in her flesh, even as he considered her as a problem. Had he made a mistake in bringing her back? That was easy to fix.

If only the rich smell of fear and halting arousal weren't so good. She was getting turned on and that was new. Of course, he hadn't exactly made any effort in that arena.

He shifted on the bed, opening her legs, and lowered himself to taste her cunt. It was good, salty-sweet, with a tang of blood and semen, and something mysterious that was all her. He loved the way her thighs went tight as he eased his tongue against her. She didn't like it, didn't want to enjoy it, but when he glanced up, her eyes had gone hazy with the tease of pleasure. She was still looking at him. Into him.

When he pushed into her again, she winced and turned her head away in embarrassment. Ashamed of her own pain, or her pleasure? No, she was ashamed because she knew him. He wasn't just some stranger doing this to her, like the slavers who raped her. She knew him. That was a new excitement and for a moment it supplanted all the usual ones. The beast in him wanted to go fast, to consume her. It always did, but the new excitement held him in check, made him go slowly, gently, to see how she reacted.

An hour before, he might have managed to give her real pleasure, but at that point he'd already hurt her too much. Left her raw and aching. Still, as he worked into her, she got wetter and restless. Her hands stopped lying dead on the sheets beside her; one twisted into the fabric and the other came to rest on his shoulder. Did she intend it as a caress? She never touched him unless he made her.

Her breath shifted with his, got faster until she was panting out of her mouth. When he brought his lips to hers, it was a real kiss, an exchange instead of an assault. Her tongue against his, slippery and tasting him. Oh, he bit her a little, he couldn't help himself, but not too hard, and he kept the beast in check. There was a way she moved her hips, a lift of invitation followed by a sudden retreat, that left him straining at the bit. She was in pain, but she liked it. After that, he went at her two ways. For every thrust of pain, too hard and deep, where he knew she was hurting, a thrust of pleasure, slow and smooth to scratch her itch.

At the end, though, when darkness descended on him, there was no two ways. It was all pain, pain, pain, until she made a wounded sound in her throat that sent him over the edge. Usually, that was how he got the missing bit of himself back. After he'd finished using her, abusing her, he was free and eager to leave. It was stupid and superstitious, but the moment when the ghosts left her eyes, he had his soul back and he needed to leave while he still had it.

That night it felt different. He lay back beside her, sated for the moment, delighted with her, how she had found something to want. Instead of lying quiet beside him, she sat up and looked down into his eyes. She was all there, no frosty distance, no thousand yard stare. It was Jack looking down at him, looking into him and she was still holding part of him.

"You're right. I died because I loved you," she said. "I wanted to save you, to help you save the world, because I loved you. Why did you bring me back? To teach me to hate you? Could you not stand knowing anyone loved you enough to die for you?"

"I told you, I'm not done with you," he growled. Something else new grabbed at his guts and that was one new thing too many. "You think I'm trying to teach you how to hate me?"

"Am I supposed to learn anything else watching you destroy the world?"

After that, things got ugly, but when it was over, he had his soul back. She was a whimpering, wounded animal in his arms, a cruelty that was high on the list of his favorites. He was the one to hurt her and he was the one to comfort her. When he tried to go, she clung to him, pleading, "Please don't leave me."

Glancing toward the door, he found the two attendants standing in shadows.

"Get the doctor," he said.

The doctor was always close by. He knew the routine, and he rarely had anything to say as he fitted the pieces of Jack back together. That night, while he put a layer of dermal weave across her bloody ass and right into the cleft of it, where things had gotten rough, the doctor looked up with something dangerously like disapproval. They considered each other over her naked back, her head cradled in Riddick's lap.

"Let me call for the Theokrat. She needs to be Converted," the doctor said. That was as far as his disapproval went.

"She already was."

"Before. She has come back…different. You see the way her eyes are wild, holding onto life. She is erratic, unrestrained."

Like me, Riddick thought, but nobody was brave enough to suggest he needed to Convert. Unconverted, he'd gone to the Underverse and come back. He was the thing that Converted, not the other way around. The Necromongers, though, it troubled them how Jack had come back herself. That the Conversion hadn't stuck, that their god had maybe undone it himself.

"She would be more obedient, less emotional, if she were Converted."

"Not what I want," Riddick said. He didn't care if she was obedient. All he wanted was for her eyes to stay alive. If she were Converted, would that little piece of his soul be Converted? Or would the scar her soul had left on his fade?

* * *

TO BE CONTINUED


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer**: None of the characters belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.

**WARNING**: This is still **not **a shiny, pretty, nice story. In fact, it's probably going to get a little worse before it gets better. If it gets better. I marked it Mature for sexual content and violence. If you don't like smut, or reading about sex or violence or violent sex or sexual violence, PLEASE DON'T READ THIS. It's not for the squeamish or the prudish.

Thoughts on Riddick as animal vs. sociopath: Writing this, I think I was imagining him as being a lot like my cats. Sure, they're animals, full of inscrutable animal instincts, but they are also adorable, four-legged sociopaths. :o) I love them, but if they were ever put into human form and given the ability to communicate on a human level...well. As an example, this is their typical nightly love-making ritual with me: Oh, Mommy, love you, love you, cuddle, purr, biscuit, rub, and then CLAW, BITE, ATTACK, BRUTALIZE. Then, they go back to cuddling and purring and will even lick my wounds--the ones they gave me--as though to say, "Oh, Mommy, what vicious creature bit your neck?"

* * *

**TWO**

The Necromongers seemed like people at a costume ball to Jack. They dressed her up as one of them: sunless pale, laced into a reptilian dress that served her breasts up like dinner on a platter. They treated her like a doll and she learned to act like it. When they paraded her into the throne room, seated her down the dais from him, she looked at the safe places—walls and corners. She walked like she was under water, careful not to move her eyes or her head too quickly.

He made them look ridiculous, because he wouldn't wear their costumes. When he passed in the periphery of her vision, she allowed herself to look at him: head shaved, clad in black like some malevolent monk. He was a shadow, bringing darkness to every room. He might have come back from the Underverse more powerful, but the light still pained him and he was content to leave everyone else squinting in grey light.

They trotted her out when the envoys from Ialtos came. They were soon to be Converted, even if they didn't realize it yet. Sitting in silence, she wondered if her presence was his doing. Did he ask for her to be brought or did her attendants do it of their own accord? The envoys were terrified people, desperately wanting to find a way to save their world. She looked through them, knowing they were only another iteration of the same experience. How many hopeless people had passed through that throne room? How many more to come? All the world. With her to witness it. To witness his boredom.

And he was bored, staring through the emissaries as thoroughly as she did. He drummed his fingers on the throne, cast a dark look at Vaako.

"If we're going to Convert them, why don't we just do it? Do we really need to do all the talking before?"

"My lord, the form is important. The ritual matters."

They were dissatisfied with their Lord Marshal. Yes, dark enough. Yes, dastardly enough. Certainly destructive enough, but not passionate for anything else.

He left the talking to Vaako and the Purifier, slumped back on the throne, watching her so that she couldn't watch him. She felt his gaze, too hot, but she had cold enough to combat it. He snapped his fingers, gestured something, and one of the Necro dames rose from her chair, approached him. Passed the Ialtos envoys as though they were nothing and knelt in front of him. Eager to serve, they all were. When the dame reached for his fly, Jack allowed herself the opportunity to look at him while he was distracted, about to enjoy the prerogative of being Lord Marshal and unashamed and indifferent to protocol and perversely interested in shocking and humiliating people.

At that moment, he turned his gaze to her, held her eyes triumphantly as he raised his foot and kicked the dame in the chest, knocking her back on the stairs of the throne. A small gasp went up from the Ialtos party, but from no one else. Jack felt his gaze boring into her, but she had already returned to staring at some small detail on the far wall. It was strange to her that the Necros wanted to decorate, when the Underverse's beauty was bleak desolation.

Through her haze, she heard him snap his fingers. Heard his voice: "Jack."

She didn't move. Didn't turn her head, but it didn't matter. The two men on either side of her took her arms and half-dragged, half-carried her to the throne, put her on her knees there. She didn't resist, but he was the one who closed the gap, reached out and took her chin in his hand, leveled his gaze with hers.

He wanted something and she was sure he would never get it. It was the way his eyes reflected light, always seeming empty, never satisfied. Sometimes it was as simple as hunger, but as often it was the reflection of something lacking. Something unattainable. He was getting angry, she could see that, but didn't look away. She wanted him to see his emptiness, his unattainable thing, in her eyes.

* * *

Jack's cold, as cold as the Necro bitches, except for her eyes. Looking into her eyes makes me hard the way nothing else can. I'm someone she looked up to. Ain't that a trip? I was a guy she admired when she was a kid, and now I'm trying to take her apart from the inside out. That's part of what turns me on about it. Maybe that's why she has ghosts in her eyes—that's what she sees every time she looks at me. Her hero trying to undo her. Or maybe she's just showing me myself. I'm all death now. Everything I do brings death. Every word I say is somebody's execution. If anything, I want to destroy the world faster than the Necros, and not to get back to the Underverse. From what I've seen, and that's more than any of them have, it ain't worth going to. At least I'm doing something if I'm destroying. The Necros want that. Want what I'm capable of.

Jack stays on her knees, looking at me. I undo the last two buttons on my pants, open them, pull out my cock. When she doesn't move, I lean forward, grab her arms and drag her right up between my legs. I use that coiled up hair of hers to get a grip on her head, force her down until her cool white cheek grinds against me. That's good all by itself, makes me run hot. I've made her do it before, and there's always an audience, always somebody watching what I do to her, so I don't know why her neck's stiff. What does she care if two people or two hundred people watch? I smack her hard, leave that white cheek red, and then she opens her mouth and sucks me.

The problem is that as good as it feels, as much as I want to lean back and watch her submit, I can't, because she looks up at me from under her eyelashes. Looks at me with my soul in her eyes. She never looks at me when I—no, I never let her look at me. I keep her in darkness, fuck her in darkness, devour her in darkness, and she won't stop looking at me. To stop her, I put my hand over her eyes, trap her there with my other hand on the back of her head, forcing my cock deeper into her mouth until she gags hot saliva down the shaft. Her eyelashes brush against my palm, and I wonder, can she see me, even with my hand over her eyes? I came back from the Underverse different, what about her?

I take my hands away and she's looking at me. I push her back and smack her again, split her lip on her teeth. Standing over her, fastening my pants, I'm ready to have them take her away, but as she's lying on the floor, she raises one hand, smears the blood on her mouth. She looks at her bloody fingers and then up at me. I push past the envoys from whatever little system of planets I'm about to destroy, drag her out of the throne room, get her to her room before I come undone, cut her out of that dress, leave a long careless gash all down her left side. I get her onto her elbows and knees and press her face down to the floor while I fuck her. Try to forget what her eyes look like. Her and her ghosts.

"You don't even want to rape my body. You want to rape my soul, and you think you can get at it this way," she gasps, muffled in her hands. If that's her new resistance, that kind of provoking shit, I plan to choke it out of her. Put my hand around her throat and squeeze.

"You think I'm not raping your body?" I say and I pound her so hard, it hurts me. Slamming against the vault of her cunt, I might as well be fucking a brick wall. She doesn't answer, except for the wet, gasping sound that's her breathing.

"You think I'm not raping your body?" I shout into her ear, but it's not working. Oh, she's tight and bloody-wet and trembling under me, and if I keep it up I'm going to cum. But it isn't doing what I want it to do. Even when I reach between her legs and try for my new favorite bit of brutality, making it hurt and feel good at the same time, I'm not really enjoying it, or getting close to enjoying it. I pull out of her, hike my pants up. She stays there until I kick her in the flank and she collapses onto her side. Walking away, I feel her gaze follow me.

I go back to her and squat down, put my mouth to her ear so only she can hear me: "You keep looking at me like that and you're going in a Conversion chamber."

At the open door, her two attendants wait for me to say, "Get the doctor." Their dead eyes don't even accuse me. She's mine. I can do whatever I want.

* * *

Enereck, the main planet in the Relos system, is a big rock, fourth one from the sun, with lots of red dirt and muddy water. Its moon, Oburnos, is green and choked up with forests. A little wobbly in its orbit the astronomers say. It peeks over the horizon of Enereck as we approach, and it's like a punch in the gut. The Necros don't feel it, don't feel anything, but seeing all those forests—as green as Jack's eyes—does something to me. I'm grateful for nearly 40 years of practice at my poker face, because otherwise they'd know how that planet knocks me for a loop.

"Why are we wasting our time here?" I say.

The Necros all bristle at that, but Vaako thinks carefully before he answers. Little fucking bitch diplomat. "No Conversion is a waste of time," he says.

"Here's my question: why one lousy little system at a time? Why not go for the big systems first? Crush the most powerful ones and wait for the little ones to come crawling to us for mercy. We tear a hole in the Bayorn system or the Meharian Empire and a little system like Relos will be begging to Convert."

Whole lot of silence after that. They've been doing their plodding, one thing at a time strategy—if you can even call that a strategy—for so long, they don't know what to think about changing the tactic. Plus, they just want me to be the scary, dangerous motherfucker. I'm not supposed to be the smart one.

* * *

After that she wouldn't look at him, no matter how tender he was, no matter how brutal he was. She wouldn't meet his gaze. Until then, the darkness was his pleasure, his way of tormenting her. To hold her in blackness, watching her, knowing her, feasting on her fear. After that, the darkness was a shield. If she couldn't see him, she couldn't avoid looking at him. He controlled what she saw, took away her power to look away from him.

When there was light for her to see by, her gaze was always beyond him. If he forced her to open her eyes, placed himself before her, she looked through him.

She never resisted again, but the spiking heat of pleasure when he fucked her turned. Didn't faded as he expected, simply turned like milk in the sun. Gone to a dull aching need that never seemed slaked no matter how often he did her, undid her. The ache was there, making him want to hurt her, making him want to return her to fear, but her gaze was fixed on the far wall of his room. He'd brought her there, where it was darker and hotter, like the Devil's back office, and still he was unsatisfied. Had actually called for a light to be brought into his dark place. So he could watch her not watching him. To know that she could see him and she chose not to.

"What do you see when you stare at nothing like that?" he said, running his hands over her, trying to decide what he wanted first. He loved the shape of her breasts, was always conflicted between the urge to worship them and the urge to destroy them.

"I see what you permit me to see. Death, destruction, loss, ugliness. All the suns have already gone dark, everything alive has gone to dust."

"Are you getting philosophical on me, Jack?"

"Do you know I'm not even afraid of you anymore? You make Hitler look like a fluffy bunny and I'm not scared of you."

"You say the sweetest things."

"It would be like fearing a virus with a 100 percent fatality rate. The virus does what it does, and you can't reason with it. It just kills because that's what it does."

"You used to admire what I was. I'm more than just a killer now, Jack. I'm a destroyer of worlds. You like that?" He rubbed his hand in slow, hypnotic circles over her breasts, the urge for worship stronger for a moment. Sliding his hand down her belly, he teased his fingers through her pubic hair. She went on looking away, as though her naked body spread out on his bed was separate from the rest of her.

"Sometimes I'm so selfish. I wish the world was already destroyed, because if I can't enjoy it, if I can't see something beautiful, I don't want anyone else to. It's worse than slam. At least in slam, sometimes there were beautiful things, things that managed to be alive even when it seemed impossible. There was green moss, like velvet, growing down in the hole on Crematoria. This place is like a tomb," she whispered. He wasn't sure she was even talking to him.

"Is that what you need, baby? You want to remember what I'm stealing from you," he whispered. As he buttoned up his pants, a shiver of anticipation ran down him, more intense than what he'd planned to do with his pants open.

* * *

They think their Lord Marshal's batfuck crazy when I tell them to bring me flowers. Did I ever bring a girl flowers? I don't think so. Doesn't seem like my speed, but when the scout ship comes from the moon Oburnos, I go to pick them out, like some pathetic loverboy, hoping to get lucky. They've brought the other thing I asked for, a couple of kids no taller than my waist. Oburnos is the kind of place where everything is cheap because of how hard life is. The kids' parents probably don't even care what we plan to do with them.

I look them over and the flowers look the worst for the trip, ripped up by their roots by some soldier. The kids at least look like somebody gave them enough food to stop them crying. They look kinda hopeful, like they think something nice might happen to them. Makes me wonder if Jack ever looked like that. She sure didn't by the time I met her.

Vaako watches, curious. It's what he does. Why he never had a chance at being Lord Marshal. Too much watching, too little destroying.

"The road to hell is paved with flowers," I say to him. He thinks about that, nodding, trying to figure out what I mean. I don't say, "I want to remind her of what we're destroying." I don't even know why I want her to remember.

The flowers are easy—tiny yellow ones and fat pink ones, a bundle small enough for a kid's hand. The big question is boy or girl? I decide on the girl, a little Jack, although this one has blue eyes in her dirty face. She takes the flowers and sniffs them with a smile.

"What's your name, kid?"

"Amitay. Who are you?"

"Riddick," I say, and Vaako frowns at me getting so friendly. "Come on, kid."

When I reach out, the girl takes my hand, like I'm just some regular guy. She's not scared at all. We walk out of the cargo bay, up all the long corridors to the throne room, her naked feet padding on metal floors. Past the little whispering groups of advisors, and I can see already how much it's going to jar Jack. How the girl's pink-brown skin and blue coat and raggedy bundle of flowers stand out in the greyness of the Necromonger ship, where everything is metal and dead. The girl and those flowers almost hurt my eyes they're so full of life.

At Jack's room, I don't wait for anyone to announce me, although usually I like to imagine Jack's spine going stiff when she hears a sentry say, "Lord Marshal Riddick." I push the door open myself, and lead the girl past the attendants. Her hand is damp and warm in mine.

"Jack," I say. "I brought you a present."

She's sitting at a vid screen, looking at the Relos system spread out before us. Her hair is drawn tight to her head and the glistening black fabric of her dress seems to bind her limbs, like she's being eaten alive by a snake. Slowly, she turns in her chair, all cold indifference, a woman who's forgotten what life looks like.

I let go of the girl and she does just what I told her to. She crosses to Jack and offers her the bundle of wild flowers.

It's better than I'd expected. I thought it would be good, but the way Jack falls apart is maybe the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. It starts in her shoulders, where she seems to go weak, and at last, when her hand closes over the little girl's, when she takes the flowers, the weakness goes to her eyes. Tears run down her cheeks, not the kind I usually get, where her body's response to pain overrides her indifference. These are real tears and she is feeling every one of them.

The flowers fall out of her white hands as she slides off her chair to her knees. Then she takes Amitay by the shoulders, looks into her face. She draws the girl closer, then pushes her back, draws her close. Can't decide what to do. That kind of feeling makes me want to destroy things, but Jack doesn't want to destroy the girl. She wants to save her, protect her. That's what's tearing at her. She can't decide if she should hold onto her or push her away. Jack's wondering where the danger is and I smell fear rolling off her in waves—such intense fear that she will do the wrong thing. She can't guess what I plan to do. She's wondering if I plan to kill the girl, to give her a demonstration of destruction. To remind her of what I'm destroying.

"Please don't hurt her," Jack whispers and for the first time in months, she looks at me. Looks into my eyes. Not through me. It's what I wanted and now I can't remember why I wanted it so bad.

"Please send her away from here. Send her back to where she came from. Please."

"Please what?" I don't know why, but that's another of her powers. The way she won't let my name touch her lips. The way she talks to me like she doesn't know me. Some dark stranger instead of her dark stranger.

"Please, Riddick. I'm begging you, Riddick, not to hurt her. Any price," she says. She doesn't hesitate. Doesn't even calculate. That's how bad she wants to save that little girl.

When I snap my fingers, one of the attendants comes forward and curtsies.

"Take the girl back to the cargo bay. Tell Vaako to take her—take both of them—back to Oburnos."

After we're alone, Jack is still crying, sitting on the floor with the butchered flowers in her lap. She looks up. She can still see me.

"Which one is Oburnos?" she says.

"The little satellite on the fourth planet. The green one."

"And so she'll go back to her home and then—Conversion?"

"Eventually."

"But now? Now Oburnos is alive? There are meadows with flowers in them? And little girls to pick them?"

"For now," I say. I squat down in front of her and she actually flinches back from me. Oh, all her tricks are gone now. She's afraid and real and sad and crying into a pile of flowers that are already dying. The ache fades and the pleasure comes back so intense I want to eat her alive. For the first time I have to give chase, like a wolf after prey. I bring her down in the corridor outside her room, and her blood and tears are hot and delicious in my mouth. When I'm inside her, she's crying so hard, her sobbing clutches at me so tightly, it feels like a supernova when I cum.

* * *

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer**: None of the characters belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.

**WARNING**: Yup, this is still a really nasty, unpleasant story. Still marked Mature for sexual content and violence. If you don't like smut, or reading about sex or violence or violent sex or sexual violence, PLEASE DON'T READ THIS. It's not for the squeamish or the prudish.

Hey, kindly readers, now that the first draft is done, going back and tweaking the revision is going pretty quickly. I'm a short story writer—a literary magazine nerd—but so far my first turn at writing fan fic has been fun. Thanks to everyone who's reading and reviewing.

* * *

**THREE**

It was so ridiculous Jack almost laughed. Riddick led her off the shuttle, a blanket tossed over his shoulder and a bottle of whiskey in his hand. He guided her into the woods, holding her hand at first and then where the terrain got rough, hooking her fingers into the back of his belt. She followed awkwardly, unable to see anything but the vague shapes of trees.

They came out of the trees into a meadow that was green and redolent with life, the grass rippling in the night breeze. Overhead, the stars pinwheeled alongside Oburnos' planet. Riddick stopped, seemingly at random, and unfurled the blanket amid the night sounds of birds and insects. After he settled himself on it, Jack stood in the grass, watching the sky, waiting for what he intended to do. He opened the whiskey, drank, and said, "Come lie down. You can see the stars better from here."

On her back, she supposed he meant. She could see the stars, lying on her back, looking over his shoulder as he pumped into her. Resigned, she lay down stiffly on the blanket, but he only put his arm around her shoulders and drew her against his side. He was hot, like a fire banked against the cold. Occasionally, he raised himself enough to drink from the bottle, but otherwise lay back and watched the stars.

"So, what are we calling this?" she said. "Romantic night out with the Lord Marshal?"

"Yeah," he said. "Puts me in the mood for romance."

"Oh, goody, a nice romantic rape by starlight. You've really got a way with the ladies, Big Bad."

He laughed, but didn't do anything. No threatening repartee. No violence. Occasionally, he stroked his knuckles against her arm or played with a strand of her hair, all the while staring up at the alien constellations above them. When he hadn't moved or spoken for a long time, Jack relaxed a little, enjoying the prickly grass through the blanket, the rich damp of the night air. In the distance an animal called and another answered. She inhaled deeply, smelled some distant flowers.

"You like it?" he said.

"Yeah." It was a grudging answer, because she liked it too much. It was achingly beautiful, maybe more so because he was being tender. Which probably only meant that later he would do something worse than usual. "When does it all end? When do you Convert them? Take the farmers and turn them into soldier drones?"

"Soon."

"And that's why you brought me here? To let me see it before you destroy it? Thanks, I guess."

"You should enjoy it while you can."

She wanted to beg him, to plead, to speak to him for the first time alone. Assuming they were alone, that there weren't a hundred Necro soldiers in the woods, watching them. "Are we alone out here?"

"As alone as we can be. There's a village about 20 klicks from here. Shuttle back that way a little more than a klick. Why?"

"Just wondered. Wondered what it would be like to talk to you alone, like two people. Instead of what we are when other people are around."

"What are we then?"

"Lord Marshal. Lord Marshal's plaything," she said promptly. He laughed. "Why are you doing this?"

"You don't like romantic starlit nights?"

"Not this. Everything else. Doing what they want you to do. Does it turn you on so much to kill people and destroy things that you're willing to do what they want?"

* * *

He rose on his elbow, looked into her face. She looked passionate. Not that lifeless thing on his bed.

"What would you give to save these people? You got a good heart, kid. Too good, like the assholes of the world couldn't make you buckle. It kills me how you want to save people you don't even know," he said. It surprised him that all the hardness she used to have had been an act. Oh, she was still tough as hell, but under it she was tender. The world hadn't done shit for her, had put her in his hands, and she wanted to save it.

"I tried to make myself be like you, take care of me and screw everybody else, but—but I don't want to be like that anymore. Watching you tear these planets apart, it's killing me," she said. He knew that was true, saw it in her face when she thought he wasn't looking.

"What would you give me to skip this flea-bitten little moon?"

"Anything." It was as quick as her answer to save the girl. Any price, she'd said.

"Anything?" he said and kissed the defenseless little shell of her ear. She shivered.

"Whatever I have that's worth anything, I'd give that to save them."

"You?"

"You already own me. That's not worth anything to you. I wish I had something that was." She sounded angry but wistful.

"Fight me for it."

She sat up, pulled away from the warmth of his bare arm against her neck. "What, are we going to arm wrestle for a moon?"

"No. Fight me for it. Fight like you mean it. Show me how much you want to save the world. Fight like you're fighting for the world."

"And if I win? You'll skip Oburnos?"

"If you win?" He felt a little bad about laughing, but it slipped out. "You're not gonna win."

"If I do. You'll skip them?"

"I'll skip the whole goddamn world if you can beat me, but even if you lose, if you'll really fight—"

She didn't let him finish, but jumped on top of him, her knee slamming into his throat and one quick hand going for the shiv in his belt. He bucked her off and she came right back. Swinging and kicking. He beat her back, threw her, but not before she'd cut his thigh pretty deep. She came at him again and again and again, even after he'd gotten the knife away. It amazed him how she put herself into the fight. Unafraid and unrelenting, no matter how many times he pushed her back.

He fought her barehanded, without using the things he was capable of since he'd come back from the Underverse. Without using that dark energy he'd first tapped on Crematoria—the wave of destruction he could reel out around him. He moved at half-speed, careless, gave her openings that she took without shame.

She never had a chance. Coming back from the Underverse had weakened her. Her skills were rusty and she hadn't managed to rebuild the muscle, strength, and speed she'd had before. Still, he let it go on as long as it could, the planet arcing over the sky in the moon's unsteady trajectory, until she was exhausted. He watched with hunger as she tried to push past her weakness. Her hair dripped sweat and steam rolled off her skin as she swayed in front of him, clearly trying to prepare her next attack.

Her transcendence was even more beautiful than her disintegration.

So beautiful he wanted her to win.

When he pushed her down in the grass, slit the seams of her pants, she was still fighting. Fighting but failing, as he pinned her down and thrust into her. His heart ached enough to poison the pleasure of dominating her. Under his mouth, the tendons of her throat were like wires and her trembling hands clutched uselessly at his shoulders. She sobbed until she was almost hyperventilating, but he forced himself to keep pounding into her until he was spent. Even then as he lay on top of her, his face in her hair, she tried to push him away. He released her and she dragged herself to her knees, gagging, and vomited violently into the grass.

He struggled to pull himself together, to close the raw place in him that was open. When he turned back to her, he said, "Is it worse if you fight me? All the things I did to you, you never puked before."

She nodded from where she was on her hands on knees, head hanging. He thought she laughed as she staggered to her feet. She raised her hands, as though she meant to fight him, but after a moment, she put her head in her hands and went down on her knees again.

He wrapped her in the blanket and carried her back, enjoying the weight of her head on his shoulder. To fill the awful silence of her defeat, he whispered nonsense: "Oh, Jack, Jackie, my little Jack. You tried so hard. It's just been too long. You're out of practice. And then you're not bloodthirsty any more. You're not really a killer. But you did good. You did me proud. Saving you was the best thing I ever did, and then I can't stop hurting you. How do you like that? You're the best thing I ever did and the worst thing I ever did."

"I don't care what you do to me, but how can you keep doing their work?" she said against his neck.

"You really want me to save the world, huh?"

"Yes."

"And you'll give me whatever I want?"

"Yes."

Instead of carrying her to the ship they'd come in, he walked her up the ramp of a second shuttle. Inside stood a dozen armed men—not Necros. Men hired for a task. She went stiff in his arms when he said, "Take care of her."

Setting her down on the bay floor, he expected to have to steady her, but she went to her feet lightly. Her hand drew across his shoulders, down his arm, and then she stepped back. She let the blanket slide to the floor, revealing her long white limbs, bruised and dirty from fighting and fucking. He regretted opportunity lost. Pleasure he might have got from her. Pleasure he might have given her.

"I can take care of myself," she said.

In her hand, she held the shiv from his armband, a wicked curve reflecting the lights in the bay. He smiled in anticipation and when the mercs advanced toward her, he waved them back and said, "Let her try."

She wasn't done fighting. She'd fought so hard to save that shitty little planet, put all of herself into it. Every bit of strength in her body, she'd given for a planet she'd never been on until that night. Suddenly it seemed worth saving, if someone like Jack was willing to fight like that for it. She had fought like that for him once, had died to save him once, and he was a moment away from understanding what eluded him. It was on the tip of his tongue what that meant.

"Go ahead, Jack. You might get lucky," he said, beckoning her attack with one hand.

She pulled herself up, elegant and trembling, held the knife at the ready. Too late he understood. Her hand came up, not to attack, but to draw the blade across her throat, slicing deep into that pale flesh. The blood jetted as far as he stood, splattering his chest and face, so that when he shouted her name, the blood was in his mouth.

For half an hour, he and two of the mercenaries worked over her, to close the wound, to put fluids back in her, to restart her heart, but in the end, she lay at peace in the midst of chaos, her lashes gilded with blood, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. He couldn't bring himself to close them.

"Put her in chill and stay here," he said to the mercs before returning to the other shuttle.

When he called the Necro ship and ordered the Manifestation Chamber readied and brought to him, they panicked.

"It was a travesty the first time you did it. That is not the purpose of Remanifestation. She's nothing, a distraction to you. And there is no one to help you do this," Vaako said. "Berkut died taking you through the Threshold the first time."

"I don't need Berkut. I'll go back across myself."

Riddick's first journey across the Threshold had been through the Necros' mechanism, but without it, he simply used his own dark energy. Opened the door inside himself and brought the Underverse to him. The first journey had been bought with the lives of a hundred men and women, their life force used to open a door to the Underverse. He opened the door the second time with every living thing on Oburnos.

* * *

A week before the beacon's message reached Helios, came the first reports of the battle between the Necromongers and the Bayorn system and the Imperial Fleet of Mehar. The beacon came from Oburnos, a dead planet in the Relos system, and it addressed the Council on Helios by name. As the beacon instructed, a ship was dispatched to retrieve a stasis chamber from the surface of the planet. Balanced on top of the chamber was a telereader with a further message for the Helion Council.

Before the beacon was received the Helion Council interpreted the final battle of the Necros as a colossal failure of military strategy. After reading the second message, they understood it as a profound success of military self-annihilation. The Necros' new Lord Marshal had run his fleet aground upon the combined forces of Bayorn and Mehar and a pair of dueling quasars, tearing the Necromonger forces apart.

When word came that the remainder of the Necro fleet was returning to Helios, the contents of the stasis chamber became the key to their salvation.

* * *

I can walk away. I'm the Devil here and they're making a deal with me. I tell myself that on the long flight back to what's left of the Helios system. It's half in shambles, half re-built, because I never let the Necros finish their work there. The Helions need me. I can walk away. Leave them to their own devices. Leave Jack to start over fresh. A hundred times, every time I sit down at the navigation controls, I think about changing course, going somewhere else with my salvaged army of Necro ships and Bayorn soldiers. They're still loyal to me after the corpse I left of their entire system, because in the end, I was the enemy of their enemies.

I think of going my own way. Except I can't. I keep course for Helios and when I dock, the whole Council comes to meet me, to hear my terms. My terms. So I let them make a deal with the Devil. Only they call me Minister of Defense, and that's the only promise I make: to protect them. The same one I made Jack. Jack.

She's in stasis, just the way I delivered her to them, so I tell them to wake her up.

"What will you do with her?" Aereon says.

"Not your business. Let me know when she wakes up." They don't like that, but what are they going to say? No? I don't demand money. I don't demand surrender, even though at that stage I've got the biggest standing army in the sector. I don't demand any more power than they're willing to give me. She's the only thing I ask for. She's the reason I'm here.

* * *

Through the observation window, she looked frail, bloodless, and he remembered that horrible scream when she'd passed through the Manifestation Chamber. Even a year in stasis hadn't taken that rawness off her.

"I'm curious what was done to her," the doctor said. "The data on the stasis chamber I find difficult to believe. That she was dead and that she was…brought back."

"She was," Riddick answered. The lights above her bed were too bright, made him squint, and he couldn't tell if she was asleep.

"I've never seen anything like it. Can you tell me how old she is?"

He guessed at it. Twelve plus eight plus two with the Necros, a year in stasis. Was she 23? "Twenty-four," he said. Practically a baby compared to him.

"Her cellular function is flawless, almost no age-related deterioration. I've seen five-year olds with more decayed mitochondrial processes."

"Well, she's twenty-four, but the body's new."

The doctor stared, disbelieving.

"Has she been awake?" Riddick said.

"A few times. We've spoken to her a little, mostly just to assess her brain function. She's disoriented, but lucid."

When Riddick reached for light switch, the doctor said, "I wouldn't do that. She's afraid of the dark."

Ignoring that, he lowered them to a dim blue buzz, not unbearable to his eyes. When the door slid open, Jack turned her head toward it. Uninvited, the doctor stepped into the room and said, "Audrey, Lord Marshal Riddick is here to see you. Do you remem—."

"Get the fuck out of here," Riddick said and pushed the man back. He approached the bed, watching her closely for any reaction. She looked like someone who'd just woken from a dream. Confused but not afraid. "Hey, Jack, remember me?"

She flinched in understanding.

"I'm still not dead?"

"You're not dead."

"But you wanted me dead. You were going to—you told them to take care of me. Did you bring me back again to watch you destroy the world?"

"I didn't mean 'kill her.' I meant 'take care of her.' Don't trust me much, do you?"

"Not at all," she said and she wasn't joking.

"I did what you wanted. I did what I promised. You beat me and I saved the world."

"I didn't beat you. And he called you Lord Marshal. I heard—"

"Because that's the stupid title the Helion Council gave me. Trying to stroke my ego. I'm their Lord Marshal now. Their military mastermind. Their evil genius."

"Why? Why do they trust you?"

She sounded plaintive but hostile. He leaned closer, breathing her in, and tried to give her a reassuring smile. Such a narrow margin between reassuring and predatory.

"Trust me? It doesn't matter if they do or don't. I went to the Underverse a very bad man and I came back something else entirely. I could crush out the life in this system in a blink. Destroyer of Destroyers. Next to me, the Necromongers look like fluffy bunnies. The Council doesn't trust me. I'm just doing them a favor. For you. Anything, you said. You promised me anything, if I stopped the Necros. We had a deal, only you tried to cheat me, Jack. Don't do that again. 100,000 people died to bring you back from the Underverse this time. If you try something like that again, I'll kill a hundred million and drag you back here kicking and screaming."

"How long?" she whispered.

"You been in stasis about a year. You missed all the whiz-bang. All the shock and awe, baby. There's some good footage, if you want to see it." He couldn't help the little note of pride that crept in. All that destruction, all that chaos he'd made for her, like a cat laying a bird at her feet.

"How long will you…go on helping the Council? How long before you get bored? Pluck its wings off?"

It angered him and amused him. How she knew him and thought so little of his word.

Leaning close until his lips were almost on hers, he smelled that old familiar fear and knowledge. She might have come back in a new body, but she was sending him all the same signals. He clutched the rails of her bed, to keep his hands off her.

"For as long as you stay my hand," he said. "You're the only one who stands between them and me. You keep your promise and I keep mine."

"I don't want to be the one who stands between you and anything," she said in a rasping voice. She reached up to wipe her eyes, but he caught her wrist in his hand and stopped her. The tears ran out of the corners of her eyes instead and he felt how little pressure it would take to break her bones.

"You promised," he said and licked the salt trail that ran from her hairline to the corner of her eye. "Now rest."

* * *

AN: More to come…


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer**: None of the characters belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.

**WARNING**: This is story does not have any fluffy bunnies. It's marked Mature for sexual content and violence. If you don't like smut, or reading about sex or violence or violent sex or sexual violence, PLEASE DON'T READ THIS. It's not for the squeamish or the prudish.

On the topic of **redemption**: looking at reviews, I'm glad to see that other people are enjoying that aspect. I'm obsessed with stories of redemption—both successes and failures. I see this story as being all about that, but you'll just have to keep reading to find out if Riddick redeems himself. :o)

* * *

**FOUR**

The next time he went to see her, they took him to the elemental instead. He went along with it, stood on a balcony in the night air, drinking the whiskey she offered him. He wondered if they'd forgotten what a dangerous thing he was, if they thought they could play games with him. Aereon at least had had her arrogance wiped away. No longer looked down her nose at him like he was a tool to be used. Everything was a request now.

"I'd like to ask you not to visit her tonight," she said.

"She sick?" he said. If Jack was sick, he'd wait, and not because Aereon asked him to.

"She is trying to get well and your last visit was a set back."

"Yeah? A set back from what?"

"In the message you sent from Oburnos, you asked us to take care of her," Aereon said, turning away, going all wispy and untouchable. It annoyed him, knowing he could kill the elemental, but not with his hands, not in any way that would give him the satisfying crunch of bone and gristle.

"And now I'm telling you I want her back." He tightened his hands into fists. Even if it was useless, it felt better. "Jack made a promise. I made one, too. And I kept mine. I did what she wanted. What you want. Now I just want what was promised to me."

"Is that all she is to you—a point of pride? Spoils of war?"

"You can call it whatever you want, but you can't keep her from me. You forgetting that?"

"I'm perfectly aware that you are capable of—." She couldn't even say it. It was all a game of words. She didn't dare refuse him, but she wanted to have a go at tricking him into accepting a refusal. Of course, they'd use Jack to manipulate him if they could. He knew that. Make her one of them. Turn her against him. "And if she doesn't want to return to you?"

"Doesn't matter and you know it. Even if she'd break her promise, you wouldn't mess up the little deal you have with me. Half the ships protecting this sector answer to me personally. And she won't break her promise."

"Why does it have to be her?" Aereon said. It startled him. No one else had bothered to ask it. He had not even asked himself. "Surely you have seen the news vids, the girls all in black who branded themselves for you?"

"Idiots," he said.

"Certainly, but willing idiots. I'm sure they would be eager for you to use them in whatever way you like."

"Willing is overrated," he said.

She looked scared at that. Brave but scared, like Jack always was. With a pang, he thought of that night in the meadow, and it heated his blood, made his pulse hammer hard between his heart and his cock.

"Jack has been studying to pass the time while she convalesces. Perhaps you would consider letting her sit on the Council as your liaison, as you prefer not to meet with them. She learns quickly, has read already the Protocols of Law, learned the Rules of the Council. She would serve you well in that position."

"I got other positions in mind for her," he said and licked his lips as he enumerated them in his mind. The ones where she screamed. The ones where she couldn't get breath to whimper. All the ones where she was under him and begging, and he was so drunk on blood and lust that he wasn't even capable of mercy. In the back of his mind, that stretching beast pricked up his ears and scented the air, remembering the salty tang of her tears, her cunt, her blood.

"She's not well. The journey back has been hard for her. And then, she's afraid of you. Perhaps you won't like to hear that, but even the mention of your name upsets her."

"Don't try to keep her from me."

"No, but let her stay in the light a little longer. Let me send you another girl," Aereon said.

"If I wanted another girl, I'd already be picking my teeth with her bones. I want Jack."

"Do you love her?"

He laughed, as he hadn't in years, expansively, and it was pleasurable, relaxed the tension in his shoulders for a moment. Love her? The burning thing in him felt a lot more powerful than any romantic little word like that.

"Then why do you want her?"

"You ask why, but you don't want to know. I want her, because she's—."

He stumbled on a word he didn't have, and the edge of pleasure faded. He could speak eloquently on death and war, but on the matter of Jack, his vocabulary was inadequate, or there were no words to describe what he wanted. He'd crossed into death twice for her and her soul was burned into his. Like the way the sun burns rings in the back of your eyes if you look at it. There'd been a moment when he'd carried her with him, carried her soul in his. That was what he wanted. That moment before she began to burn him. The problem was once she was back in her own skin, the only way to get at her soul was through that body. Jack had been right about that—he'd never raped her just for the physical pleasure of it, although that, that was it's own lovely thing. He wanted that, too.

"Because she's mine. You better bring her to me, 'cause you people aren't gonna like what happens if I come for her."

"Yes. You see what sort of fool I am, asking if you love her, but I'm not the sort of fool to cross you," Aereon said, looking off into the night.

"I want to drink her blood and fuck her until she screams. Is that love?" All that was true, but he said it mostly to remind himself that there was an audience, always people watching. Guards, advisors, generals. Someone was always listening. If they wanted to use her as leverage against him, let them know what he intended to do with her.

He let them keep her. Three months he agreed to, with a promise that when she was able she would attend the Council sessions.

* * *

Jack liked the house they gave her, with its small rooms looking onto a courtyard garden. There were armed guards on the wall that didn't make her feel any safer, but she had a nightlight in her bedroom, and seeing the green in the garden every day made up for it. She liked the housekeeper, too. A woman named Winna who never said anything if she could help it. She wasn't subservient. If Jack asked her to do something or told her to do something, it got done, and she never said, "Yes, ma'am," or "Certainly." She just did it. If Jack asked a question, Winna answered in the fewest number of words that she could. That was a relief compared to the other people Jack had to listen to. Her tutor, the person Aereon had sent, who could never let her just read in peace. Who had to talk to her about the books, quiz her about them. It was what she had hated about school. Still, even he was better than Aereon, who seemed to mean well, but talked enough about nothing that it made Jack suspicious.

For once the elemental was quiet, sitting on Jack's sofa, there in the flesh, staring out at the garden. Waiting for her to speak, Jack cast a longing look at the telereader on the side table. The book she had been reading when Aereon interrupted: a history of starvation, disturbing but with interesting ideas about the nature of hunger.

"I've spoken to _him_ about your situation," Aereon said, her gaze still on the garden. There was no need to ask for clarification. There was only one _him_ who mattered.

"What is my situation?"

"Does it interest you? The Council? You seem interested. I see that you take notes, read the public briefs."

"It's something to think about. I don't always understand it," Jack said. "What do you mean my 'situation'?"

"He asked for you. Apparently, he feels that you made a promise to him on Oburnos. That there is an agreement between the two of you. He was not specific about the nature of it, but he wanted you to go see him."

"Really? See him? Did he say that or are those your words?" Not wanting the elemental to see her agitation, Jack stood up and paced to the side table, picked up the telereader.

"He had asked earlier, the last time he saw you, and I asked that he give you a few months to recover. You weren't well at the time. You're better now, aren't you, though? You look much better," Aereon said.

More talk about nothing. Jack waited, thumbing blindly through the text on the reader.

"Three months we thought, then perhaps you'd go visit him. I'd like you to discuss the possibility of him appointing you to represent the Ministry of Defense at Council sessions. As you know, he hasn't named anyone. I thought perhaps he would be willing to appoint you. He trusts you, I think."

It jarred Jack that there had been a calendar somewhere, counting down the days until she belonged to him again. And no one had told her. She put the telereader down to avoid dropping it, and walked to the garden window on unsteady legs. Barely registering Aereon's words, she stared out at the little pear tree and the moss creeping in the brick path. A spider had woven a web across the lilac trellis.

"Of course, you don't need to go immediately if you don't like. It wasn't set in stone, those three months. I'm sure he would be willing to reconsider," Aereon was saying, but her voice was tight. Jack turned to her and caught her in the lie. She was so transparent—the thought spurred a giggle that Jack couldn't suppress and Aereon stopped speaking in mid-sentence.

"When are the three months up?" Jack said.

"Well, I believe today is the last day, but as I said—."

"You better take me to him then. You don't want to cross him."

Aereon exhaled heavily and turned her gaze away. "I'll have official transport to take you to the Ministry of Defense."

"Yes, fine," Jack said. She wanted it to sound calm. She wanted to be calm, but after Aereon was gone, she pulled the trash bin out from under the desk and vomited into it.

* * *

Riddick was still waiting for the urge for Jack to burn out or dwindle, but when she finally came to him, it was more powerful than before. As though bringing her back from the Underverse a second time had compounded the problem.

The Council delivered her to him like a prisoner. A nicely dressed prisoner on a fancy transport, with two bodyguards to escort her across the dock and into the Ministry of Defense building. He watched her on the surveillance screens. She wore the same clothes he'd seen her in at the Council sessions, while she listened intently and made notes on a telepad. Black shirt, high collar covering that white neck, and black pants hiding those white legs. He never got to watch her walk on the Council news vids, though, and that was something. The way she moved over the ground was ethereal, her animal strength spent in death again. All he ever saw of her on the vids was the side of her head. Every day he watched, until he'd memorized the way she tilted her head down and moved her fingers over the telepad. Memorized the way she looked at people who weren't him. Twice he saw her on vids of official state events, wearing dresses that showed her slender neck.

Once, something had been said—the vid didn't record what—that made her smile: a hesitant lift of her lips and a blush. In the instant before she looked away, she had glanced at the cameras with her eyes unshielded, carrying that piece of his soul where anyone could see it. He'd watched that clip hundreds of times before he deleted it in a fit of rage.

Now there she was at last in the flesh, coming closer, down into the dark corridors below the building, where he sat brooding like a troll under a bridge, waiting for his little goat to come tripping across. Then she was in the elevator, her two bodyguards replaced by a pair of Defense Officers. They were bringing her down to the war room. He leaned forward to the intercom and said, "Take her to my private quarters."

The two soldiers looked up apprehensively at his voice, but answered, "Yes, sir."

She didn't react at all. Didn't turn her head toward his voice. Didn't change the expression on her face.

He finished his correspondence, made himself finish it, to see how his body felt about the delay. Angry, barely reined in, and that was some kind of revenge, wasn't it? Big Evil writing reports, making administrative decisions, restraining himself. If it weren't for the fighting, the hunting, the killing that still went on—the kind of killing every government was built on—except for that, he'd worry they'd turned him into a lap dog. But no, he was half guard dog, half pit fight dog. She had done that to him.

Normally, he went one of two back ways to his living quarters, but that day, he went down the main corridor, to walk in the air she'd passed through a few minutes before. There was still a faint ghost of her smell lingering there and it made all the blood leap in his veins. At the door, two sentries waited. They were hard men, as loyal as he could get them, but they looked wary when he said, "Get the doctor."

"Is there a problem, sir?"

"No, but whenever she's here, I want a doctor on stand-by." He smiled as he said it, couldn't stop himself. The anticipation was so intense he wasn't even thinking clearly.

She was waiting, just off to the side of the door, in a disorienting halo of light from the bathroom, and that fast, something sharp pressed into his back, just to the side of his spine.

"You didn't forget about the sweet spot, then?" he said, still grinning. "I got plenty of knives around here—you didn't find one you liked?" It was interesting that she'd touched him first, and he loved how her fingernail was digging a little crescent into his skin through his shirt.

"I thought about it, but…" She didn't finish, didn't say what had decided her against it.

"Did you come on your own or did the Council send you?"

"Aereon told me to come today. She said you agreed to three months and today's the last day. So here I am, to keep my promise to you," she said. Her voice was cool, but not quite steady.

"You know, she offered me other women, but I turned her down."

"Am I supposed to be flattered?"

"Aren't you?"

"Not really."

"You're a hard woman to pay a compliment to. Well, come around here, let me get a look at you," he said.

He liked the game she was playing, but not as much as he wanted to play another one. She dropped her hand and stepped around him with her eyes down. That was infuriating and alluring. He chucked her under the chin, brought her gaze up to meet his. She was pale, cool to the touch, with her dark hair pulled back neatly. All business except for those wide eyes full of his reflection.

"Thought you weren't afraid of me anymore, kid."

"When I was already as good as dead, I wasn't, but now—now I don't want…."

"You don't want to die again? I'm not gonna kill you. Hell, I never killed you. You killed yourself and you better not do it again," he said and that easily his excitement, his pleasure at the smell of her, spiked hard to anger.

"No, I'm not afraid of dying," she said. "Dying is easy, and I wasn't afraid when I thought you were going to destroy everything. Now that you haven't destroyed the world, there's something worth protecting again. Hope is scary. Like having something you could take away from me."

She'd gone to that dreamy place he hated, where she wasn't his, where he couldn't get to her. When they'd been with the Necros, she would have fallen down like a ragdoll when he smacked her, but now she only staggered back half a step. She didn't exactly fight him, but she didn't go willingly. When he grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the bed, she resisted, put a hand over his and tried to pry his fingers away.

"Don't," she said as he dragged her along.

"Don't?" he snarled. "You didn't say that when I was holding up my end of our bargain, when I was running the three biggest armies in this galaxy through a meat grinder."

"I just meant, you don't have to do that—I'll do it. I will."

With her free hand, she started unbuttoning her shirt. It made him hesitate, curiosity overtaking greed for just a moment. She fumbled her way down the buttons with trembling hands, pulled the shirt off and tossed it away. As quickly, she pulled off the camisole she wore under it. Her bare breasts ended that moment of hesitation. There had been one bite mark that hadn't healed despite the derma weave. It had scarred, left a white ghost of his teeth on her breast, and now it was gone. Because she was new again. All her own again, unmarked.

When she bent over to take off her shoes, he grabbed her by the hips, hoisted her up and in three steps tossed her down on the bed. He'd never slept there, had a narrow bunk in the room beyond the kitchen. The bed was for her, about her, because of her.

He had her breasts in his hands hard, already leaving bruises. The urge to worship, the urge to destroy, neck and neck. In a dark whisper, he said, "You think because all the marks of me are gone off you that you don't belong to me?"

"I don't," she said. "I'm here to keep my promise."

"'Cause we can fix that. You wanna be branded like cattle? Want me to carve my initials on your ass?"

"No," she said, and she sounded scared.

Maybe thought he'd do it. He wasn't sure he wouldn't, or something like it, the way the beast in him was pushing out in all directions. She was sharp angles and tight muscles against him, defying him, and stinking with fear. Her resistance made it so much better than the first time had been. Everything else fell away, until there was just the need to get into her, consume her, with his teeth on her flesh until he broke skin and she bled into his mouth.

When she reached for the button on her trousers, he knocked her hands away. Like hell they were going to do things her way. Flipping her roughly onto her face, he yanked her pants down and took with them a pair of black panties. To his surprise, she grabbed the steel bars of the headboard and tried to get away from him. He grabbed her ankles and jerked her back. She got right back up on her hands and knees, trying to escape. Her hair had come loose and he took a handful of it to hold her, while he ran a hand up between her thighs. She was dry with fear, so tight he couldn't get a finger into her. He wasn't sure which he liked better—that dryness or her wetness. There was plenty of time for both. When he slipped his hand up to her ass, she tensed even more, actually reached a hand back to try to fend him off.

"Not that. Please not that," she said, nearly choked on the words.

"Oh, you're all new again, Jack, aren't you? Council sent you wrapped up like a present for me. Brand new toy." He felt that excited, overwhelmed with possibilities.

"Try—try not to break it on the first day."

"Ask me nice and maybe we don't do that today. Maybe we save that for tomorrow."

"Please don't," she said.

"Please what?" he growled, but she didn't answer. Damned if she didn't turn her head as far as his grip on her hair let her. Turned her eyes away from him.

He flipped her over to get a good look at her face, pinned her down with a hand across her throat, pulled that mess of hair out of her eyes. She was angry, trying not to cry, and that was so sweet he couldn't wait for all the other things he wanted to do. One hand was enough to get his fly open and he put his cock into her in one hard, tearing thrust.

And she fought him. Clawed at the hand he had around her throat, her whole body bowed and straining under him, her gaze locked on his face. It was hard work at first, getting in and out of her, but it was good, even when she finally looked away from him, when she lay still and let him do what he wanted. How long had he waited? However long, it was worth it. When he finally reached his climax it was so intense he felt like he was falling and the only thing to catch him was her. He rested his full weight on her, enjoying the stifled intake of her diaphragm against his belly, each breath a little agony of effort. Kissing her mouth, he tasted blood. He didn't remember doing that. He lifted himself on one elbow, looked down at her curiously. Two sharp little wounds in her lower lip—she'd bitten it herself. He licked the blood away, considered her.

She was calm. Her eyes looked wounded but not full of ghosts.

"How many times you gonna make me pop that cherry?" he said and even got a little smile from her.

"That was the last time."

"That's right. No more starting over."

"No, I won't do it again. I promise," she said softly. "But you have to promise me something."

"I don't think I do."

She felt so good under him, he reached for the back of his collar and pulled his shirt off. Pressing her against his skin, he lapped up the salt behind her ears and along her neck. When he started working his way down over her collarbones to the valley between her breasts, she put her hands on his shoulders, pushed at him.

"Promise me that if you do it—if you kill me—you won't bring me back."

Those bossy little hands on his shoulders, he didn't know if he liked them or not. Couldn't decide if he ought to encourage that or put a stop to it.

"I'm not gonna kill you, Jack."

"You might. On accident. Might squeeze too hard or rupture something or cut me too deep."

"I might," he said darkly and rose up on his knees, releasing her hands from his shoulders. He unbuckled his belt, unfastened the other buttons on his fly.

"Promise me if you kill me, you won't bring me back." Her gaze followed his hands and his reaction was as sure as if she'd actually laid her hands on his cock. Unbuckling his boots, he enjoyed the look on her face, the surprise, the curiosity, the fear. When he stood up to pull off his boots and pants, she shifted her feet to the floor and stood up beside him.

"Promise me," she said.

Did she think it gave her more bargaining room? That they were equals if they were both naked? Dead wrong on that one. He could remember men he'd had to kill wearing nothing but his skin, even if he couldn't remember any woman he'd taken his boots off to fuck. Her included right up to that moment.

He grabbed her wrist and she was still in a fighting mood. Only problem was, her brain might remember how to fight, but she'd lost all that muscle memory. She tried to break his hold, but it was useless. He got her into his arms, lifted her to return her to the bed, and she was saying, "Promise me, promise me, promise me," in a hysterical voice. It was delicious, all the cool length of her pressed up against his bare skin, legs against his legs, her hands clutching at his sides, wriggling against him. She managed to get an arm free, took a wild swing at him, landed it on his jaw, but she was the one who screamed. He heard the pop of bones in her hand. All it did to him was work him up, left him with a stinging jaw and a throbbing cock.

She got her fingernails into his shoulder and raked them across his back. When he tried to put her down on the bed, she kicked at him, aiming for his crotch. Catching her foot, he twisted it, and then flipped her hard over his knee, slamming her into the barred footboard of the bed. She shrieked when he pinned her under him. All the blood he'd worked up for lubrication the first time was dry so that the second go round was almost rougher. Once he got in there, bearing down on her, she made a sound that was mockingly similar to a cry of pleasure. He sank his teeth into the back of her neck, and every time he thrust forward on her, she rewarded him with a helpless gasp of pain.

Even when he'd finished, she moaned as he shifted his weight off her.

"Broke your ribs, didn't I?" he asked, running his hand down her back. She didn't answer.

When he opened the door, the sentries looked at his nakedness in surprise and then stared past him to where she lay face down on the bed. A brilliant splash of red showed against her leg.

"See something you like?" he said.

"No, sir," they answered in unison.

"Get the doctor."

* * *

To be continued


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer**: None of the characters belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.

**WARNING**: This story persists in being not nice and maybe even scary and disgusting. Don't let a little random kindness fool you. Marked Mature for sexual content and violence. If you don't like smut, or reading about sex or violence or violent sex or sexual violence, PLEASE DON'T READ IT. It's not for the squeamish or the prudish.

**Kindly readers**: Don't worry. Redemption comes in all shapes and sizes, and that was part of the challenge I was given: to find some redeeming moments for Riddick without **changing** him. If you never have, take Saismaat's recommendation and read LeGuin's _The Ones Who Walk away from Omelas_. Or get some of Joseph Campbell's work on mythology. He has some great stuff on the concept of scapegoats and sacrificial motifs. Thanks for continuing to read and review.

* * *

**FIVE**

When I go back in the bedroom, Jack's sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to stand.

"What are you doing? The doctor's coming," I say.

"I need to pee," she whispers. She sounds so goddamn innocent, looks so helpless, that I offer her my arm.

"I'll help you." She looks up at me and I can see she doesn't want the help, doesn't trust me, but once she stands up on that ankle she holds onto me.

I look down at her and fucked but there's a lot of blood running down her leg. Enough that it kind of troubles me. In the heat of the moment, I wasn't really thinking about how this is her first go-round in a new body. My little virginal Jack and I did that to her. I already want to do it again.

We go slow, her limping, gasping for air against her ribs. She keeps her hand on my arm until she lowers herself to the toilet. Then she leans forward, arms on her knees, head on her arm.

"It's okay, Nurse Nancy. You can go," she says.

Still got her sense of humor, but it shocks me how she's been transformed. She's still a fighter, but it's all in her words now, gone out of her body. Impresses me, as always, how she talks so fearless to me. I got three-hundred pound killers who call me "sir" and "my lord," and she's gonna call me Nurse Nancy?

"I'll stay."

I wonder what we're doing, with her just sitting there, but finally she starts to piss, just a trickle in the bowl. She makes this muffled whimpering sound and her shoulders shake.

"Sure you're okay?" I say.

"It just burns," she mumbles into her arms.

Shit, I'm there, I'm a party to it, so I put a hand on her back and she's so thin I can count her vertebrae. I make this noise I've always known, I guess. This sound to comfort animals. Kinda surprises me when she presses her head against my bare thigh, clasps a hand behind my knee, and leans into my hand. Now what's that supposed to mean?

"Can I do anything for you, Jackie?"

"Promise me," she says.

"Oh, we're still on that, are we?"

"Promise me. I don't mind. I'll come here every night and you can do whatever you want. You kept your promise. There are meadows and little girls picking flowers and lots of happy people who maybe won't ever hear the word Necromonger or know your name. So thank you. I'm really grateful for that. But I need your promise that if you go too far, you won't come for me again."

She's still holding onto me, sounds like she's going to cry, trying to soften me up.

* * *

She didn't know who to hate, him or herself, for how she clung to his leg, hurting all over because of him, and she was thanking him and asking him for favors. She didn't know who to hate, but it got a little clearer when he walked away without answering. When he came back for her he was wearing his pants and boots again. After he helped her limp back to the bed, she heard him running water, washing his hands. The door opened again and the sentries escorted another man into the room, the doctor, of course. He wore the same uniform as the sentries and the three of them stared at her. She didn't bother to pull the sheet up. She was indifferent to strangers looking at her naked. At least they hadn't witnessed the rest of it. That was a nice change from being with the Necromongers.

When Riddick came back, drying his hands, he gave the sentries a black look.

"You dumbfucks waiting for a tip?" he said.

"Perhaps it would be better for them to take her down to the infirmary for treatment," the doctor said. "Or back to her cell?"

"This is her cell," Riddick said.

It was like being stabbed with something very cold. This was her cell.

The sentries retreated while the doctor looked confused. "She's not a prisoner? I thought she was being interrogated."

Despite herself, despite the pain in her side and between her legs, Jack laughed. What kind of answers could he possibly get out of her? Yes, that hurts. Yes, that hurts a lot. Yes, that hurts enough that I wish I were dead. At least they hadn't gone there on the first night.

"What seems to be the problem?" the doctor said, looking at her. The Necro doctor had always just come and done whatever Riddick told him to do. She looked at him for instruction.

"Do you not understand how to follow simple orders?" Riddick said in a menacing tone. "You don't need to know who or what she is. You just do what I tell you. Her ribs are broken. Her ankle is twisted. Broke a couple of fingers. She's got half a dozen open cuts. You can see the blood running down her leg."

"I—of course. I'm Major Bulgagen." He moved toward her, was about to put a hand on her shoulder, when Riddick caught him by the throat and spun him around.

"Don't touch her with your bare hands. Put your fucking gloves on."

It was strange and not comforting to watch someone else under his spell of terror.

"I—how about I give you something for the pain, before we look at those ribs?" the doctor said. He opened his case with unsteady hands and put on a pair of latex gloves before injecting her. "Now, if you'd like to lie back."

She did it slowly, keeping her right arm tight to her side, and watching the doctor. His eyes moved over the sheets. White, of course. Riddick had chosen white sheets, so that she could see her blood.

"So, I see, um." The doctor looked at Riddick again and glanced away quickly. "You're having some vaginal bleeding?"

"You could say that," she said, relieved to have someone to feel sorry for. He looked so worried and out of his league.

"Maybe we'll look at your ankle first."

"No, just, do it. Just do what you need to do. I've had it done there before with the laser and the dermal weave." She had never had it done by a doctor who was clearly terrified, never had it done when she was lucid enough to be aware of Riddick's presence, so she simply raised her knees and put her uninjured hand over her eyes. At least she wouldn't have to watch Riddick watching the doctor. It took him half a dozen uneasy approaches, before he got up his nerve to put the speculum in. After that, he seemed to know what he was doing and although it hurt, it was better than leaving it to heal on its own. Assuming Riddick would have let it. Considering that took her too close to tears, so she closed the door on the future. No sense looking in there.

When it was done, the doctor started to clean up the blood, but she pushed him away and closed her legs. She felt his eyes, running down her, perhaps calculating the work to be done. She missed the Necro doctor—an emotionless man with no bedside manner. He had seemed like no more than a technician repairing a machine.

Major Bulgagen inspected her ankle, declared it sprained and put a chemical cold pack on it. Then he splinted the first and second finger on her right hand and started to work on the little cuts and bites, cleaning and running the blue laser over them. No scars. In the middle of it, a familiar warm hand came to rest on hers, where she shielded her eyes.

"How are you?" Riddick said. She moved her hand and he took it in his, held it, running his thumb over her knuckles. He looked so kind, squinting a little against the doctor's light, his hand so warm and comforting that she took a chance.

"Please, promise me," she said.

"You better leave that if you don't want to make me mad."

"We wouldn't want that, would we? You might do something really bad if you got mad."

"I might." As quick as she knew he could be, he grabbed her side with one powerful hand and squeezed so that her ribs gouged at her, left her gasping. The whole world went grey, the pain pushing everything else out of focus.

"What are you doing? You could puncture a lung doing that," the doctor said, but she didn't hear what Riddick answered.

When she opened her eyes again, Riddick was leaning over her with a concerned look.

"Baby?" he said.

"P—."

"Don't say it again. I been sweet as pie to you up to this moment, but you're gonna find out what pain is if you don't drop that."

She looked deep into him, into his moonlight eyes and for a moment she saw something human there. A thing that could be wounded, that could be healed. She stared into his eyes until he blinked and closed himself away. She swallowed and the back of her throat was hot and dry. She was so tired. Sweet as pie, he said.

"Can I have some ice cream?" she said.

He laughed and kissed her forehead.

"You want ice cream?"

"Yes, please."

"The painkillers are kicking in," the doctor said. He was still there, looking scared.

"I'll tell you what. After the doc fixes up your ribs, you can have some ice cream."

She nodded, and while the doctor started the bone mend on her ribs, Riddick went out. She heard his low voice, but not what he said, and then the doctor whispered, "Can I take a message to someone for you? Your family?"

"Will you ask Councilor Aereon to come visit me?" she murmured, trying to pull away from the nasty feeling of the bone mend's electrical current under her skin.

"What's your name?"

"Jack—or Audrey. I don't know."

He put his rubbery hand on her cheek and turned her to look at him. "You're her? I didn't realize—I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you."

She pushed his hand away and over his shoulder, saw Riddick watching them.

"What are you doing?" he said.

"Just going to do the blue laser on her lip," the doctor stammered.

Riddick approached, loomed over them. "Stop chatting and do it then. You don't need to talk to her about anything."

By the time the bone mend had cycled and her ribs had been taped, one of the sentries returned, carrying a small pink and white striped carton. She watched it longingly as Riddick took it and carried it across the room behind her. A moment later, he came back and said, "Did you not even look at her back?"

"I'm sorry, sir?" the doctor said. He had been packing up his case.

"Lie down, Jack. Let him do your back."

She obeyed, feeling weightless, and lay across the foot of the bed. While the doctor started at her neck with disinfectant and the laser wand, Riddick sat on the floor next to the bed so that he was at eye level with her. Opening the striped carton, he offered her a spoonful of ice cream.

The blue laser burred in her ear like bees and the ice cream was wonderfully cool and green with matcha. She opened her mouth for another bite.

"You'll get a brain freeze," he said, but gave it to her anyway. He was being so nice and she knew she ought to be worried, but couldn't. Her brain felt fuzzy, untrustworthy.

"It's good," she said around the next mouthful. He kissed her, pressing his tongue in among the creamy green coldness, and that was how little she could trust her brain: she kissed him back. Long, slippery cold kisses. Bite after bite, kissed him until the ice cream was gone.

"You like that?" he said.

"Yeah," she said and petted his bare arm where it rested on the bed beside her. Abruptly he narrowed his eyes and stood up.

"Not that one. Leave that one." His hand, a little cooled from the carton of ice cream, came to rest on her right buttock, just below her back.

She strained up on her elbow, looking over her shoulder to see what he was doing. When he drew his hand away, she saw the oval of his teeth in her skin. The doctor looked at her, then back at Riddick and nodded.

After that, she supposed she slept. She woke at some point in the dark, lying under the sheets, alone, naked. She didn't know where she was until she tried to roll over and felt the pain of her ribs. Carefully, she worked her way to the edge of the bed, found the floor with her bare feet. The floor was stone, she knew that, but it wasn't cold, which she'd expected. It was warmer than her skin, rough but comforting. Her ankle still hurt, but she could walk on it. She took two halting steps away from the bed, trying to guess at the correct trajectory to the bathroom. After two more steps, she heard his voice, close by.

"What are you doing, Jack?"

Her heart thumped violently. If he was there in the dark for her, it only ever meant one thing and she couldn't stomach the thought of it. To have to submit again so soon, especially if he wasn't going to promise.

"I'm thirsty."

"Get back in bed and I'll bring you some water."

She wanted to refuse, but it was useless. She could only guess at where he was and she was a prisoner there. Slowly she moved backwards, feeling for the bed, and sat down to wait.

His boots scuffed against the floor, not even trying to sneak up on her and then he took her uninjured hand and closed it around a glass. She drank eagerly and held the glass out into the dark for him.

"You want more?"

She shook her head and inched back on the bed, drawing the sheet over her. A new thought occurred to her. "Where do you sleep?"

"Are you trying to get me in bed with you again?" he said and she felt his breath on her face.

"No," she whispered.

"I didn't think so. Go to sleep."

Amazingly, she did. Was too tired not to, even knowing that he was there in the dark.

* * *

He watched her, as long as he dared to. The heat of her injuries throbbed more brightly than the rest of her in the darkness, and for the first part of the night she was restless under the influence of the drugs. She tossed, unable to turn over, and whimpered. She mumbled soft things, among them, "You're wrong," and "Promise me you won't." He would have thought it was a scam, except that she was so profoundly asleep that when he sat next to her and stroked her hair, she didn't wake. After he brought her the water, she slept peacefully, and for the first time he seriously considered other possibilities.

It was true, there were other women who would take him. Not for long, he imagined, but there were enough who would take him for a while. Women who might even enjoy his sexual predilections. Up to a point. He tried to imagine that, tried to picture bringing into that bed some woman who wanted to be devoured. He'd had plenty of women before Jack, had never given a second thought to it. Taken opportunities wherever they came. He tried to imagine being able to do whatever he liked and not always being locked in some kind of mental combat with Jack. He tried to think about it, took himself dangerously close to waking the beast, but the fantasies were stale. Was it the mental combat he liked? Or was it her unwillingness?

No, she was willing. She'd fought him a little, but she'd come there and taken off her clothes herself. Because she'd made a promise. Because the world meant so much to her that she'd offered him anything to save it, and wasn't that interesting? How she hated what he did to her, but she was going to keep coming back for it, because that was her sacrifice. And she'd sacrificed herself for him, too. Thinking of that stirred him, and he was too aroused to stay. She needed to sleep, to heal.

* * *

Jack woke to a strange yellow glow, not daylight but light anyway. She had expected darkness, but under the edge of the bed the yellow glow came from a small sleek clock that showed her the time was early morning. On the top of the clock, a small sun globe gave off its artificial daylight. It was a surprising nicety, clearly intended for her. He didn't need a light to indicate the day. Her ribs still hurt, but she could move. Wrapping the sheet around her, she went to the door to assess all the options. When she laid her hand on the access panel, the door slid open. In the hallway outside, six armed guards looked at her.

"Where is he?" she said hoarsely, her throat bruised from his chokehold.

"Lord Marshal is in conference at the Ministry," the head sentry said. "Do you require assistance, Councilor? Your transport is here whenever you're ready to leave."

It seemed impossible. Was she going to be allowed to simply walk back into daylight? And Councilor? Had he agreed to Aereon's suggestion that she serve as his liaison to the Council?

"Leave?" she said.

"At your convenience. Or I can call for breakfast for you. Lord Marshal Riddick left instructions for you to be given whatever assistance you need."

She shuddered uncontrollably at his name and that decided her.

"I'll go now," she said and stepped into the corridor.

"Shall I call the doctor first?" The guards looked at her with such concern and confusion that she glanced down at the bloody sheet wrapped around her.

"No, I'll go now." She knew she ought to go back into the room and put on her clothes, but she had to know if she really could leave. If it was a cruel game or if the sentries would lead her to the transport dock. "Now."

"Yes, ma'am."

The head sentry led her to the same transport dock she had entered through the night before. There sat a neat little craft and at her approach the aft door slid open. She walked up the metal stairs in bare feet, clutching the sheet close. From the pilot's seat, someone called, "Your destination, Councilor?"

"Home," she said. At her house, there was only Winna to stare in discreet horror, but there were mirrors to face. She couldn't do it. Waited in the hallway while Winna went into the bedroom and bathroom and covered the mirrors there. Later she would have them removed altogether. In the bathroom, Jack locked the door and unwound the sheet around her. Streaked down the insides of her thighs was dried blood and semen. She turned on the hot water in the shower and began to wash, scrub, clean, purge, purify.


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer**: None of the characters belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.

**WARNING**: Although this chapter is a little tamer, this is story is still very much **Mature** for sexual content and violence. If you don't like smut, or reading about sex or violence or violent sex or sexual violence, PLEASE DON'T READ THIS. It's not for the squeamish or the prudish.

**Kindly readers**: This is a shorter chapter and one that may feel like a departure. If it's too quiet for your taste, just remember it's the calm before the storm.

This chapter is born out of my curiosity about surveillance and celebrity obsessions. Our culture uses technology to obsess about famous people and to turn every aspect of our lives in spectator sports. YouTube allows anyone to get a moment of fame, whether they want it or not. It allows people to post things to a public forum that might have otherwise stayed secret. Entertainment and news shows play endless loops of footage of famous people and famous moments, wallowing in things like the train wreck of Brittney Spears. I imagine other cultures with similar technologies would follow the same route. If Jack and Riddick existed in our society, they would certainly be targets of obsessive reporting, surveillance, and rabid speculation. As for Riddick, well, he has his own surveillance issues.

Thanks for continuing to read and review. Someone wondered how I put this all together so quickly and the answer is two-fold. 1. I am a writing machine. I write 3-4K words a day on a couple different projects. 2. I wrote the first draft of this the first three weeks in April, so basically all I'm doing now is going back and doing revisions and edits on a section a day before I post it.

* * *

**SIX**

Jack expected—dreaded—a summons, if not that night then the next. "Maybe we'll save that for tomorrow," he'd said.

Instead, she received two packages. In one were the shoes and clothes she'd abandoned, neatly folded. By his hands? The other package contained two digital readers with encrypted briefs and data from the Ministry of Defense.

When she reported to the Council the next morning, her place at the Recorders Table was occupied by another person—a young woman who looked at her with wide eyes. Across the dome circle, she saw the empty chair with the placard that said, "Council Representative to the Ministry of Defense, Audrey Parnell." It shocked her to see a name she hadn't used in fifteen years. To see her name. Just two days before, the placard had said, "Minister of Defense, Lord Marshal Richard B. Riddick." He had never sat there, had refused to make even one appearance for a swearing in, and they had no power to make him. He did what he liked and that only mostly coincided with what the Council wanted.

She crossed to the Council's dais carefully, as though the carpet between the two sides of the room might be quicksand. The ushers at either side of the stairs moved aside for her to pass. There was no outcry when she pulled out the chair and sat, and when the elderly Minister of Agriculture arrived, he offered her his hand. He was smiling, but the corners of his mouth were tense. She kept her right arm tight to her aching ribs, her splinted fingers against her belly. Her left hand she kept in a fist at her side, but seeing his offer of friendship lingering there, she held it out to him. The awkward handshake lasted an instant and the minister's uneasy smile brightened.

"A great pleasure to sit alongside you, Ms., uh, Parnell," he said.

"Thank you," she said.

When Aereon arrived, they made their greetings, and Jack waited for the inevitable.

"How was he when you visited?" the elemental said, her gaze on the far side of the chamber where the news vidogs were already set up.

"He was himself," Jack said. Surely that described it.

"And so he agreed to have you serve as the Ministry's representative."

"Yes, he sent me the briefs and some other materials."

"That's very good. I'm pleased about that. I worried he might insist on maintaining the other arrangement he seems to believe exists between you."

"That arrangement continues," Jack said with a twinge of anger.

Aereon didn't answer, but before turning away to take her chair, said smoothly, "I believe you'll be a valuable presence here."

There was a brief announcement of Jack's post before the session began, and then began the exhausting work of being in the camera's eye for hours. At the Recorders Table, no one had known who she was. An unnamed nobody, caught on the periphery of the news vid, because of the line of sight from the news gallery to the Council dais. That first day, at least, she wasn't called on to speak, but she could see why Riddick had never agreed to take part in such a thing. Sitting at attention, listening to the endless discussion, reading the briefs and committee proposals tested her nerves and he had never been one to sit still. At least it was something to do, something to put her brain to work on, to fill up the hours of the day.

When it was done, she went home and discovered she was no longer a nameless nobody. The news vids were full of tedious footage of her sitting in Council, listening and taking notes. The soundtrack for it was a giddy, exhausting commentary on who and what she was.

"Now, we've heard that Ms. Parnell is a long-time associate of Lord Marshal Riddick," said the chipper news reader, who wore an elaborate gold coif.

"Yes," an alleged expert said, "She was a passenger on the Hunter-Gratzner, one of two civilian survivors of that crash, while he was being transported as a prisoner. So she has known him for quite some time, and in fact was the woman he had with him when he took command of the Necromonger forces."

"What exactly was her role in the Necromonger court? An advisor? Is that why she's been selected to serve as the Defense Ministry's representative to the Council?"

The expert made a wry smile. "Based on witness accounts of the time, I would hardly use the word 'advisor.' There has been some rather wild speculation—."

Jack clicked to the next show, where a Council spokesperson in his neat blue tunic said, "Ms. Parnell is a private citizen and she has a right to her privacy."

"So regarding the various eye-witnesses who described her as, and I quote, 'his concubine,' and 'a sex slave,' what do you think of that?"

"I think that's rabid sensationalism and offensive."

On another show, another so-called expert: "I don't think there's any question that there is a sexual component to their relationship. One that, it has been suggested, dates back to their meeting on the Hunter-Gratzner—."

"But," the news reader interjected excitedly, "at the time she was a child. Twelve, according to the flight records, and apparently disguised as a boy?"

Back to the Council spokesperson, whose interviewer was more professional: "Is there any truth to the fact that the Council essentially handed her over to him, escorted her to the Ministry of Defense as a prisoner?"

"No, Ms. Parnell is not a prisoner. Not of the Council. Not of the Ministry of Defense."

"But she was escorted to the Defense Ministry two nights ago. Here, in the footage, we see her flanked by a pair of…soldiers? Police officers? Bodyguards?"

"Ms. Parnell is always guarded, and as you can clearly see she is not being treated as a prisoner. She is not being restrained. She is a public figure and concern for her safety requires the Council to offer her protection," the spokesman said. Jack watched herself walk toward the Ministry, head down a little, going to her fate.

"What about the documents on the webs purported to be custodial documents, giving the Lord Marshal legal guardianship over Audrey Parnell?"

"Fraudulent."

"That's the Council's official word? No chance that these will turn out to be real?"

"Absolutely not."

Jack clicked away with a knot in her gut.

Another expert. Where had they found so many "experts" on her?

"The Council denies these documents are real, but are there circumstances under which a situation like this would be legal?" said the interviewer

"Certainly. The State takes custody of prisoners and children who are at risk. And in cases where a person is suffering from a mental illness or other mental impairment, guardianship can be awarded to someone else," the expert said with a frown.

"The Council declares she is not a prisoner and she's not a child. So, are we to believe that the Defense Minister has appointed someone with a mental impairment to represent him at the Council?"

"Obviously not. Rather, I would say Audrey Parnell is legally impaired. Leaked Council memos suggest that she was put in Richard Riddick's custody as part of the same agreement that made him Minister of Defense. He demanded her and she was given to him like a piece of property, however they try to dress it up. She's nothing more than a sacrificial lamb." The expert was so indignant that Jack nearly liked him. He understood nothing about the situation, but he wanted to do the right thing.

On another show, a panel of people chattering at once.

"We have to ask, why this woman? She's no military expert. Not a politician. She has no formal education. In fact, like the Lord Marshal, she has a criminal record. So if this is a personal appointment, what is she to him?"

"Well, thus far, she seems to be his only associate who's managed to survive an acquaintance with him for any length of time." Laughter.

"Although, is it true that she has in fact died twice? Or is that more mythology-making? Like the rumors about what happened in the Relos system?"

"What isn't mythology-making are the vids circulating on the webs. Have you seen these? They are—let me just say, not only does the law prohibit us from showing these videos, but basic decency does, too."

"These are the two vids from Necromonger surveillance? Salvaged off a vessel taken to scrap by some ship wreckers in the Bayorn system?"

"Yes, pretty horrific stuff."

"Impossible to believe that this woman would go to him willingly, if these videos are real. If he were anyone else, he'd be facing trial for rape."

"You don't think she's consenting?"

"Have you seen the vids? That's not consent."

Sickened by it all, Jack fell into bed and slept dreamlessly.

She woke to the little chime on her vid screen that signaled an incoming call. Winna had been holding all calls, avoiding the hundreds of inquiries from news shows, but she had let this one ring through. Jack's stomach heaved as she pressed the receiver key. The screen was mostly grey, the camera showing her a room in near darkness. At the periphery some small lights from electronic equipment were the only illumination, and there was a darker shadow that was surely him.

"Jack," he said. "Saw you on the vid at Council today."

"Did I do okay?"

"If that old man touches you again, I'm gonna rip his arm off and jam it up his ass."

"We shook hands," she said wearily. "I know you're not really familiar with the whole idea, but that's what civilized people do."

"You don't belong 100 percent to that club."

"Because you don't want me to?"

"You think just 'cause you got your virginity back twice that you're innocent? You forgetting how you ended up on Crematoria? You forget about the people you killed?"

She hated the satisfaction in his voice. He was right. She'd killed people, had been cold, had been callous, had tried hard to be what he was. Now that she was trying to be something else, he wanted to remind her of her mistakes.

"I'm trying to be a civilized person," she said.

"Well, you look it, but no more of this Audrey bullshit. Tell them to make you a new name card. Got it, Jack?"

"Yes," she said. "Did you—are you my legal guardian?"

"They like their paperwork. Been watching the news, huh?"

"That's true then?"

"Yeah. Did you see how eager they are to make like I been fucking you since the Hunter-Gratzner wreck? Not enough for me to be a mass murderer. Want me to be a child molester, too. How come nobody's ever satisfied with how evil I am?"

"Why do you watch it?"

"To see you," he said in a husky voice. "Why do you watch it?"

She didn't answer and after several minutes of silence, he said, "I'm sending you my report on the Amperi system. Your committee meets tomorrow to talk about it."

"Thank you," she said, but there was no answer. A moment later, the encryption system signaled a new file. She downloaded it and read it, making notes. He had written it, had actually put the words in the report together himself. It was a strange feeling, knowing she was reading the product of his thought processes, that he had sat and carefully disassembled the possible motivations for a conflict in some neighboring system. His sentences were stark, unlike the briefs and reports other Ministries produced. He wasted no time on subtle words or elaborate rhetoric. His recommendations were equally stripped to the bone—trade concessions as a carrot to one side of the conflict and for the other side, a stick in the form of strategic missile strikes. He even provided a chilling assessment of how big a stick was needed: "Based on past Amperi conflicts, killing at least two percent of the civilian population would be enough to change how they feel about a peace deal."

That was how he saw peace—something you could kill your way to.

* * *

More to come, liebe Kinder.


	7. CAUTION Chapter 7

**BIG SERIOUS WARNING THAT YOU NEED TO READ**: I've cautioned people not to read this story if they're sensitive about sex and violence, but this chapter comes with a more serious warning for my kindly readers. Please read this before you continue.

This chapter contains a **very**** bad thing**. Worse than the other things that have happened in the previous chapters. It's bad enough that it makes me feel queasy reading it. It was hard to write. So, if previous chapters have brought you close to your threshold of what you can stomach, I suggest you proceed with caution. I'll give you fair warning when the very bad thing is about to happen and you can avert your eyes, scroll down. The very bad thing is mentioned in passing, so you won't be missing it as a plot point, you can just avoid reading it dramatized. I fully expect that I'll lose some readers after this chapter, so I want to say that I did **not** make up or invent the very bad thing. It came from the transcriptions of a Rwandan war crimes tribunal that I read. It's a very real illustration of the kind of cruelty people are capable of.

For those of you who make it out the other side, I'll offer this reassurance: this is the darkest hour. It does get better from here, even if that seems impossible.

**Disclaimer**: None of the characters belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.

* * *

**SEVEN**

Usually, Riddick sent a pair of Defense Officers, who waited for Jack outside Council, standing next to her ironic bodyguards. Bodyguards tasked with protecting her from everyone but the one person she needed protection from. They reported to _him_.

The Defense Officers always said the same thing: "Lord Marshal Riddick requests your presence." _Requests_, as though she had a choice. Sometimes he came himself and that was always worse, because it meant he couldn't wait. That he would do what he wanted on the transport in front of witnesses.

Otherwise, she went when he commanded and submitted as well as she could. Only a few times did he hurt her enough that she had to stay away from Council until she recovered. Once, he fucked her against a wall with enough force to crack her skull, but seemed honestly surprised by the injury. An accident.

"Forgot how breakable you are," he said gruffly, holding her hand while the doctor worked. Almost sheepish. Almost apologetic.

Often she went to Council with minor injuries under her clothes. No low collars or short sleeves or skirts for her. Even with the blue laser, it took time for bruises and bite marks to fade.

She learned to negotiate. To say she would come an hour later than the time he named, to demand some privacy, even if it was only his hand covering the surveillance camera in the elevator while she was on her knees in front of him. She learned to hold her head up in public, knowing what people whispered as she passed. There were good days when the sun shone in the garden and the world seemed lovely and worth any sacrifice. Even days when he spoke to her in a normal voice, made a joke, explained some defense matter, argued about what she said in Council.

There were plenty of bad days. Days when she cried before Council, after Council, in the bathroom during the Council's breaks.

A day when her throat was dry, her neck sore, her whole body hot and aching. She dragged herself home from Council, lay on her bed, fevered and miserable, watching with horror as the news showed Riddick returning from five weeks on a "diplomatic" mission to Amperi. She would have laughed at that description if she hadn't known he would call for her. An hour later he did, the vid screen showing his grey room of darkness.

"Jack," he said. "You miss me?"

"I watched you on the news," she said, not knowing how to answer that question. "I saw you got some sun. You've got a tan line from your goggles."

"Fucking desert. Ought to nuke those bastards. Get your ass over here and remind me why I don't."

"I—could it maybe wait? Maybe tomorrow night. Please?"

"Wait?" he growled and he leaned close enough to the screen that she could see him vaguely, those glinting silver pupils. "I been waiting for five weeks."

"It's just—I'm sick. I've got a fever and I feel like crap."

He leaned back and was silent. She tried to gather herself, to prepare herself to get dressed and go out to him.

"Yeah, fine," he said and the vid screen went to black.

Relieved, she slept, fading in and out, and woke two hours later. Staggering to the bathroom, she thought of his "yeah, fine," with dread. Of course, he was angry. She weighed it against how she felt. She was already sick. Already sore, already miserable. The fever at least made the world hazy, made her feel reckless. Blunted everything.

She called for her transport and pulled on the clothes she had worn to Council, still damp with fever sweat. At the door, Winna gave her a look that was both reproachful and sympathetic.

"I have to go," Jack said. "Or he'll make it worse."

When she reached the sentries outside his private quarters, they looked puzzled and then alarmed.

"He—."

"Just tell him I'm here."

The sentry depressed the intercom and hesitated so long, she finally said, "It's me, Jack."

"Jack?" came the answer, a soft growl of pleasure. The door slid open, almost like he'd been expecting her. Had he known she was coming?

She stepped into the hot, dark room, feeling him close by and smelling something strange but familiar. A moment later, the lights around the floor came up and revealed a woman with bloody blond hair. She wore a collar around her neck with a chain that fastened to one of the steel slats in the bed's footboard. She huddled on the floor, her hands bound, shivering, her back a solid sheet of blood. Her lovely blue eyes when she turned them to Jack were wild and tinged with fear and hope. Blood leaked out around the edges of her gag. On her right breast was an elaborate brand—an R for Riddick, of course. That she had done to herself.

Riddick stood a few feet away with a bloody whip in his hand. Smiling. The perfect host.

"Jack, meet the president of my fan club. Did you know I have a fan club? I don't remember her name. She says she's seen you on the news vids. Said she didn't think you look like woman enough for a man like me. Said you looked—what was it? Fragile and frigid."

"What are you doing?" Jack said, and it wasn't the fever that made her feel shaky.

"I could ask you the same thing. Didn't you turn me down earlier? I let you say no and now you're here." He grinned pleasantly and flicked the tail of the whip.

"I changed my mind." It sounded like madness, but she had been given a reprieve and come anyway.

"Yeah, well, I decided to take your recommendation to get another girl," he said.

"It wasn't my suggestion." Aereon's careless notion. A suggestion made by someone who didn't know what turned him on, what brought him to climax.

"But you wish I'd hurt somebody else for a change, don't you? Hell, you just had five weeks away from me and you still didn't want to come." There was tension in his voice that made her wonder if he had feelings to hurt or if it was just part of his game.

"I'm sick and I don't want you to hurt other people and I'm here now."

"Jealous, Jack?" He stepped close to her and purred against her neck. "The first half hour she was begging me to fuck her. Screaming my name. You won't even say it and she was screaming it."

"And then what? She started crying after she saw your dick?"

"You don't gotta flatter me, baby. It ain't that big and you don't usually cry until I stick it in you." He brushed his hand over her breast, scorching her through her shirt.

"Is that when this all went wrong, too?" she said, struggling to sound calm. He wanted her to freak out, wanted her to do something reckless. She took a step closer to the bed, but he followed, still breathing on her with breath so hot it made the fever insignificant.

"We never even got to that part. Honestly, I wasn't really into it. Funny thing—she doesn't smell right. Doesn't smell—." He took a deep inhale of her skin, just behind her ear, under her hair. "She doesn't smell like you."

She waited.

"Wanna have a go?" he said, offering her the whip handle.

"Why don't you unchain her? Let her go and then we'll…"

"Yeah, we'll what? You in the mood for something in particular? Come all this way over here, what did you have in mind? I'm taking requests tonight."

It left her mouth dry and her brain empty. She couldn't think of anything to ask for that wouldn't go wrong. He was like the monkey's paw; you had to phrase your requests carefully, consider all the implications. Without answering, Jack walked to the bed and unbuckled the strap that held the ball gag in the woman's mouth.

The woman coughed, mumbled something that might have been "thank you" or "fuck you."

"Quite an interesting assortment of equipment you've got," Jack said, wondering where it had come from. He'd never used anything on her but his body, his knives, and his belt. She felt him approach, how his skin crackled with electricity as he closed the space between them.

"Oh, it's not mine. Madame President brought the whips and chains with her. Said she liked it that way."

"I didn't know," the woman mumbled. It sparked some much-needed anger for Jack, to cut the fear.

"How stupid do you have to be not to see what he is?"

"What am I? Tell me what I am," he said. He tossed the whip onto the bed, brought his hands to rest on Jack's hips, and ground his erection against her backside.

"You're a bastard."

"That's already been established. What else you got? Dumpster baby?" He made it sound almost romantic, whispered against her skin the moment before he bit the back of her neck. The fever helped, so that the excruciating pressure of his teeth washed over her. She simply let it be painful, nothing she could do about it. Then one hand slid down, clutched her tight between the thighs, while the other worked up under her shirt, stroking her breast and then pinching the nipple so hard she yelped. His answer was a low grunt of pleasure as he humped against her, and she felt blood trickle down her neck.

"You're a sick fuck," she said.

He laughed and for a moment, his hands eased on her as he licked up her neck to her ear.

"You're a psychopath. Or a sociopath. I can't remember the difference. Maybe you're both."

His hands tightened again.

"You're an animal. A monster," she said and was thinking about what else to add when he threw her down on the floor. She got her hands up to catch herself, but was going fast enough that her face collided with the hot stone.

"A monster?" he said. His hand was inside the back of her shirt and then she heard the sound of his shiv in the fabric. Her camisole went after that and the blade was on her bare back, drawing a thin line of pain to the right of her spine.

"A monster who likes to eat up little girls? A monster coming out of the dark after sixty years of famine? You're not even grateful that I saved you from them, are you?" His tongue followed the line of the knife.

"I used to be," she said. She knew she ought to be conciliatory, ought to appease him. "I—I am grateful. I know you could have left us."

"Which monster do you like best? Flapping hungry toothy monsters? Or me? It's always one or the other."

"Why? Why is it always one monster or another?" Not conciliatory. He grabbed her arms and yanked them out from under her, slamming her cheek and her breasts against the floor. Then her hands were behind her as he cut away the remains of her shirt.

"Because that's just how life is for you, Jackie. That's what fate has in store for you. Think about it, how monsters have been dogging you every step of the way. Go half way across the galaxy to get away from one, run into a whole planet full of them. Get rescued from those monsters by another monster. Your mommy, those desert beasties, Johns, the slavers, the guys in slam, the Necros, me. Who's your favorite monster?"

There was only one answer as he put something cold around her wrists—manacles.

"You are," she said. It was almost true. He was better than some monsters. Sometimes she thought he was going to eat her, but he hadn't yet. If someone was always going to hurt her, better it was him.

She was relieved that after all that, he just wanted the usual, although it hurt more in that position, with her knees rubbed raw on the stone floor and him slamming into her like a battering ram. Halfway through it, though, he eased out of her and she felt a familiar dread.

"Please," she said.

"Oh, little girl is saying please to the monster? Please what?"

"Please not too rough…Riddick." She hated buckling to his will, but it earned her a small kindness. Enough saliva that when he entered her there she didn't feel like he was going to tear her apart. It only felt like being slowly skewered with a sharp stick. It only left her sucking air and feeling queasy instead of screaming.

"I know you got new equipment and all, but has this thing always been this tight?" he grunted.

"Yes, you fucking asshole," she blurted, struggling to relax, to make it hurt less. To think about the stone under her cheek and not what he was doing.

Laughing, pleased with the unintended pun, he reached around her and slipped his fingers into her pussy and began to stroke her, not at all roughly. The blurring between pain and pleasure was almost unbearable, how he could do something horrible and something good at the same time. Just as she'd found a way to stand it, to be apart from it, he breathed into her ear and whispered, "You don't know what a monster is."

Gooseflesh broke out across her back and gave her fear away. She thought he would laugh, but he pulled away from her, and he was motionless behind her, thinking things she couldn't guess at. He stood up and she heard him go into the bathroom, turn on the water. Rolling over, she started to work her manacled hands down the backs of her legs, desperate to get any kind of control over the situation.

She'd forgotten about the other woman, who still knelt, chained to the bed, staring at her with terrified eyes.

"Are you okay?" Jack said.

"Not—not really," the woman mumbled through bloody lips. The tops of her shoulders looked like raw meat.

"What did you think was going to happen?"

"I don't know. He just—I don't know. He's so beautiful and deadly looking."

"Not deadly looking. Deadly."

"What's my little harem talking about?" Riddick said, coming back from the bathroom.

"How beautiful you are," Jack offered.

"Oh, you liar. You don't even like to look at me if you can help it."

"Because you don't like me to look at you, except when you want me to. I thought you were handsome when I first met you." She never flattered him, but a slow, sickening feeling came on her that the fan club president was going to live through whatever happened, but she might wish she hadn't.

"Is that so?" With the only light coming from behind him, she couldn't see his face. His belt was still unbuckled, liquid dripping off it. The air around him was heavy with alcohol fumes and he held something in his hand. What was he doing?

"Yeah, when I was a teenager, I used to fantasize about you while I masturbated. Imagine that: little fifteen-year old me, finger-fucking myself and thinking about you," Jack said softly. The closest she'd come to trying to seduce him.

He laughed and when he pushed her back on the floor, her chained hands under her, she thought she had appeased him. Maybe he'd just fuck her and be done with. Nothing bad might happen. Then he caught her legs, trapped them tightly between his, and she saw what he had in his hand—a bottle of alcohol. He brought out his shiv and poured the stinging liquid over it, over her belly, his hands.

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**Here's the very bad thing.** Please scroll down if you don't think you can handle it.

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"Used to know this guy—Jesper. Had a lot of power over a lot of little people. Now, he was a monster. He wasn't satisfied with raping. Couldn't make do with violating the various holes a person already had. He liked to make new ones. Used to take a knife and open a guy up, right here—." The point of the blade came to rest on her belly, off to the left, above her hip. In a frantic moment she tried to remember what vital organs were under that spot. "Open him up and fuck the hole. Now he was a monster, don't you think?"

"Yes," she said and she wished she hadn't already wasted the appeasing things she'd said. Had saved back something to soften him, to pull him back from destruction. The blade was already biting into her, so sharp that the weight of the handle was doing the work. Knowing it was dangerous, still she resisted, tried to move away.

"You better stop wriggling or you'll get a lot more of this shiv than you want."

"Please don't, Riddick."

"Oh, that was nice, baby. I like how I didn't even have to ask for that. Just for that I'll give you a choice. I show you what a monster I am—."  
"You're not."

"Too late to call that one back. Either I show you what a monster I am, or you go home and I show my number one fan what kind of monster I am."

It was tempting. So tempting it nauseated her. She wanted to go home so badly.

"Please no please no please no," the fan club president chanted.

"Shut up, you dumb bitch," Jack said, but it didn't have any effect. Riddick leaned toward the woman and backhanded her hard enough to knock her head against the bed rails. That shut her up.

"So? You or fangirl?" he said. He was beautiful, all that animal power and the easy way he grinned, like they were having some harmless fun.

"Me," she said. He slipped the blade into her.

"Jesper used to just stick the knife in, punch the intestines, whatever, he didn't care. I'll go with a little more finesse here. I don't want to knick your guts." He was watching the knife carefully, but she couldn't bring herself to look. It was a burning sensation, sharp and frightening, but it wasn't as bad as she'd imagined. Not until he slipped his fingers into the incision. Then he was touching things inside her, pushing against she didn't know what. He moved his fingers like he did when he put them into her pussy, stroking, exploring, and then he brought his bloody hand to his fly and picked up the bottle of alcohol again.

She didn't bother to ask for mercy.

There were probably worse things, but as violations went, it was complete: being pressed under him, with him inside her body, pushing into parts of her that had once seemed safe. It was a scalding, sickening pain that took over everything, left her unable to breath. Worse was his overwhelming presence, how he invaded her everywhere. The taste of him in her mouth, the smell of his sweat, his steady panting breath. If she opened her eyes, all she would see was him. Everything was him. The weight of him on her, his hip slamming against her ribs, his cock gouging at her until she felt the edge of the incision tear, until all she could think of was him. She knew that was what he wanted. To occupy her completely. To blot out the horizon.

Wanted her to remember it forever, so that every rape would always be this one. He would never have to do it again, because every violation would remind her of this one. Every time he raped her, she would be chained, lying on the stone floor, feeling him violate her body, her self.

She jerked her head to the side, trying to breathe. The fan club president was slumped against the bed, staring, sobbing, blood and saliva running down her chin. When Jack met her gaze, the woman vomited down herself convulsively.

Then at last, Jack was able to go away, to imagine herself an observer, to watch him thrusting against her, grunting, stroking her hair as she lay under him. She hardly even noticed when it was done, only that he was pulling up his pants and walking away. She didn't know how much later he came back, but he was kneeling next to her, pressing a towel against her side.

"That ain't too bad. I coulda been a surgeon," he said. He reached under her and opened the manacles, but by then her hands were numb, felt dead under her body as he pulled them out. He rubbed them and then pressed them against her belly, against the towel.

x

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**And you're safe now.**

* * *

Over the sound of someone whimpering, she heard the door swish open, heard him say, "Get the doctor."

He came back and moved her to the bed, put a pillow under her head. Against her ear in a gentle whisper he said, "First time for both of us, Jack. Never did that to anybody before."

"Promise me," she said. It was all she had left. She couldn't look at him, couldn't look at herself.

"You're not gonna die."

It was a different doctor, a thing that wearied her beyond all measure. Someone who had never seen her lying naked and bleeding. She made herself sit up and Riddick cursed her, tried to push her back down.

"Call for medical transport," she said to the doctor.

"Sir—I—is she—?"

"The doctor here did four tours in the Conflict. He's dealt with things a lot worse than that paper cut I gave you," Riddick said.

She pushed his hand off and said to the doctor, "You can take care of me, but this woman is going to a hospital. Where's the key for the chain?" She pressed the towel into the burning hole in her side, stood up, and took a step toward the fan club president.

"Jack, we'll take care of it here." Riddick sounded more exasperated than angry, and he caught her shoulders, eased her back to the bed.

She stood up again, clenching her teeth, and said to the doctor, "My name is Jack Parnell, Special Representative to the Helion Council for the Ministry of Defense and I'm telling you to call for transport to take this woman to a hospital. Do you understand me?"

The doctor obeyed, too ignorant to realize the danger he was in. He took out his phone and requested transport.

Riddick stood back watching and didn't stop him, but when the fan club president had been loaded on a stretcher, he called after her, "Be sure to tell your friends what a good time you had."

Jack could breathe easier after that, to have the responsibility of someone else's life taken off her shoulders. Because he insisted, she lay back with her head in Riddick's lap, even though his pants were soaked with her blood. As the doctor worked, Riddick combed through her hair with his fingers.

"Did you really? Fantasize about me?" he said, smoothing his hand over her forehead.

"Yeah, I always thought about you when I was getting off. Who else? Of course, in my pathetic little fantasies, you never cut a hole in me and fucked it."

The doctor's hands jerked and Jack winced.

"Hurt her again and I'll break your fucking neck," Riddick snarled at him. Then he was right back to warm and cuddly killer, like he had a toggle switch inside of him. "Well, what did you fantasize about?"

"I don't know—normal things, I guess. What other people do for sex."

She hadn't meant it to amuse him but he laughed. After a moment, he said, "You have a fever."

"I told you I was sick."

"There," the doctor said when he was done. He looked ashen and haunted. "Maybe, uh, a little more work done to make sure it doesn't scar, but no internal damage. I gave you a shot for infection and something for the fever."

"Thanks," Jack said and sat up. "Can I have a shirt?"

Riddick took off the one he was wearing and gave it to her. "The shirt right off my back. That's just the kind of guy I am."

It was warm from his skin and nearly clean. He'd put it on after… everything had happened. She stood up and pulled it on, ignoring how weak she felt. Her pants were on the floor, not clean but in one piece. She put them on, sitting on the bed with her hand pressed to her side.

"Will you walk me out to my transport, doctor?"

"Uh, of course," he said, cutting anxious looks between her and Riddick.

"You're not going anywhere," Riddick said with a frown. She ignored him and slipped her feet into her shoes. No tying them with the way she felt.

"I'm going home."

"No, you're not."

"I won't stay here with the smell of that woman's blood. It's bad enough when it's my blood, but I won't—and I won't come here again until it's cleaned. I won't."

"You will if I say so," he growled.

She met his gaze and, as cold as she could manage, said, "You know what? No, I won't. Clean it or a get hotel room the next time you want to rape me. That stink makes me sick."

She and the doctor both cried in the elevator, huddled in their opposite corners. She didn't even care that Riddick watched her on surveillance. All that mattered was that she had brazened her way through and been allowed to leave.


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer**: None of the characters belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.

**WARNING**: In case you haven't figured it out from the last chapter, this is rated **Mature** for sexual content and violence. If you don't like smut, or reading about sex or violence or violent sex or sexual violence, PLEASE DON'T READ THIS. It's not for the squeamish or the prudish.

**Kindly readers**: I feel like I want to give you all a hug and maybe a nice cup of cocoa as reassurance. Sorry we had to go through the last chapter, but we made it. I promise that's the worst of it, although there are still some rough patches ahead. Thanks for continuing to read and review.

* * *

**EIGHT**

Jack wants it clean, it'll be clean. I incinerate the place, burn it back to stone walls and floor and ceilings, start from scratch: new walls, new bathroom, new kitchen, new bed. That's the first thing she says the next time I send for her: "Is it clean?"

"Spick and fucking span, princess," I say. Pretend like I'm mad.

"I'll be there in an hour." Her face is like ice, staring off to one side of the vid screen. I know it's my fault she looks like that. Can't undo that.

"Leave now and we can have dinner together."

"Really? Dinner?" she says and looks at the vid screen with this curious little hope in her eyes. Screw air, food, water. I could just about live on that look.

"Well, I'm gonna have you for dinner, but I can scare up something for you to eat, too."

That's not a joke. It's been a month and I drink my dinner out of her from a handful of bites. She lies back on the new bed, all white and willing and totally indifferent.

"No, we're not playing that game tonight," I say.

"We'll play whatever game you want," she says, but too slow. She's not paying attention to me. Gone off to the land of fluffy bunnies or wherever she goes to get away from me.

"You say that, but we play your game as often as we play mine. How's that work? Big Evil playing the little girl's game. Who's in charge here?"

"What is my game?" Like she doesn't know. Like she doesn't use that coldness against me.

I grab her wrists, pin them above her head with one hand, and trap her under my weight. I love the feeling of her breathing under me, moving restlessly, testing possible escape routes. She doesn't do that tonight. She lies perfectly still except when I lean down to kiss her mouth, and then she closes her eyes and turns her head to the side.

"That game, that game, where you close your eyes and pretend you're not here. That's your game and we ain't playing it tonight. Look at me," I say.

I grab her, turn her face back to mine, but her eyes are closed. She doesn't even bother to squeeze them tight. She just doesn't open them.

"Fucking look at me," I say and I know I sound crazy-mad. Nothing like her cold, usable anger, but hot and—and this is the point in my dreams where I do what she's afraid of. Where I kill her. Kind of on accident, but mostly in a rage. Impotent rage, because she has the power to give me what I want, but I can't make her give it to me. I'm maybe the most powerful living thing in the galaxy. I went toe-to-toe with death and made it my bitch, and little Jack has that power over me? After what I've done to her, how can she be indifferent?

I slap her, but she doesn't open her eyes. Then I shift forward on her, straddle her ribs, and pull the manacles off the hook on the back of the new headboard. Her eyes fly open when she hears the chain rattle and that spark of fear is sweet. She looked so good in them, I had to have some. Seeing them, she stops with the martyr act and tries to fight me. She definitely isn't indifferent about what I did to her that night. I thread the manacles through the headboard, clamp them on her and drag her down the bed until her arms are taut above her head.

"Don't worry, baby, I got these new just for you," I say.

She doesn't say anything, but her eyes get big when I open her legs and pin her ankles underneath me. She jerks hard against the manacles, tenses her thighs, but goes completely still when I bring the big knife out of my belt.

I can see what she's thinking about, that she's remembering that night, and it makes her eyes hot with hate. She's not even afraid. She's thinking about killing me, maybe.

"No, Jackie," I say. "Not that again. Once was enough. For both of us."

I keep the blade sharp enough to cut on contact, but I go light on the pressure, teasing it up the insides of her thighs to her cunt.

* * *

When the knife touched her labia, she felt a sickening hope. If she bled out before the doctor came, she would be free. But then Riddick might come for her again. Might make her come back. That was worse than this.

"If I didn't like your little fur so much, I'd give you a shave," he murmured. "Yeah, I love it when you look at me that way."

To cheat him, she closed her eyes.

"I told you to look at me," he said. Petulant like a little boy.

"No. You can do whatever you want to me, but I don't have to watch."

To her surprise, it didn't hurt, more cold than pain, when he slipped the knife into her. He repeated the movement of in and out, slow then fast, a disgusting parody of sex. She waited for the pain to start, for the blood to start, until the jarring cold of the steel hilt knocked against her clitoris. The blade was too long for that. He had turned the knife and penetrated her with the handle. When he eased it out of her, she opened her eyes and saw it was so. He flipped it in the air, caught it, and returned it to his belt with a bloody hand.

Across his palm lay the blade's mark. It would heal quickly, she knew. Like it never happened by tomorrow, but in that moment, it bled slow, sticky drops that oozed out of his fist and landed on her belly and thighs.

"You wanna see me bleed, don't you?" he said. All the menace was gone from his voice and it was a soft, inviting purr, as he returned his hand to between her thighs. He stroked her, and she wondered what he thought of as his face relaxed, as he watched himself slicking her with his own blood before he worked his fingers into her.

It didn't hurt, was warm and nearly pleasurable. She waited for him to return to the game, but he went on caressing her, and after a moment, he leaned forward to kiss her breasts.

The movement freed her legs and she considered what to do with that freedom.

"You thinking of fighting me?" he said against her breast and bit her, but his fingers didn't stop their steady movement inside of her.

"Yeah," she said on a sudden inhale as he stroked his thumb against her clitoris.

"Why, baby? Why? You always make me take. You never want to give."

"You like taking. You only want me to give until the moment you're ready to take."

"That how you see me?"

"It's how you are."

When he pulled his fingers out of her, she waited for him to reach for his belt buckle, but he slid down the bed, catching her open thighs in his hands, leaving a bloody print on her left leg. His tongue was wet and hot, slipping across her, into her. The promise of pleasure was wretched when she balanced it against the anticipation of pain, the inevitability of cruelty. He only used the act as a way to wet her enough to get inside of her and he often bit her.

When he rose up between her thighs, a smear of his own blood marked his cheek. He unbuckled his belt and came to her as always, still dressed with his boots on. Pressing her knees up to her chest, he put all of his weight on her so that she was fighting for air while he fucked her. Then he knocked the lamp off the nightstand and he was the thing he liked to be—an invisible monster she couldn't escape.

* * *

Jack ended up with nothing worse than her regular assortment of bites and bruises, but he made her stay, wore her out until it was easier to do what he said.

"Go to sleep," he said threateningly and pulled her head down on his shoulder. Going to sleep wasn't bad, her faced pressed into the familiar animal smell of him, but waking up in the dark was scary. She was alone in the bed. He never slept through the night with her. She wasn't even sure if he slept, only that he sometimes insisted that she sleep next to him. What was worrisome was never knowing if she was really alone or if he was somewhere in the apartment. In the kitchen sharpening knives. In the chair in the corner of the bedroom watching her sleep.

She lay still, listening, but in the black, her senses always played tricks on her. Getting up, she moved carefully, one hand out in front of her, trying to visualize the location of the bathroom door. She found the far wall and passed her hand lightly along it until she found the opening. Inside there was a strange burned smell that she didn't want to dwell on. Who knew what he did at night when he was done with her? Trailing her hand along the countertop, she made it to the toilet and smiled to herself at making it that far without bumping into anything. When she finished, she didn't flush, enjoying her otherwise quiet foray in the darkness. She wasn't helpless in the dark.

She patted her hand across the counter for the faucet, turned it on low, and leaned over to drink and splash water on her face. As she fumbled for a towel, some hot, wet thing grabbed her calf, making her jump. A little hiccup of fear escaped her and he laughed.

"Nice view from here," he said. "Hand me that lighter, would you?"

She turned, easing her leg out of his grasp, and saw his shimmering eyes. He'd been there all along, like a dragon in a cave, reclining in the tub with his eyes closed.

"So is the honeymoon over that you come in to take a piss without even knocking while I'm in the bath?"

"If you weren't always playing your creepy Silent Lord of Darkness game, I would've knocked. I didn't know you were in here," she said with her heart thumping in her throat.

"The lighter," he prompted.

Unnerved, she swept her hand along the counter, found other things, but nothing that felt like a lighter.

"Crap. You can't see it," he said. He rose with a loud slosh, stepped out of the tub, dripping water down her back as he leaned over her.

The lighter flared and for a few seconds revealed the strange scene. He held the lighter to a cigar clamped in his mouth, his face cast in red from the flame, his eyes closed tight against it. On the counter lay a bar of soap, a straight razor, a can of shaving cream, an ashtray, nail clippers, toothbrush, toothpaste, some mechanical thing she didn't recognize. Probably used it to sharpen his claws and fangs. Secretive Hygiene Rituals of the Silent Lord of Darkness. That would be a popular vid show, especially if he bathed in baby's blood.

Then the lighter died, leaving her with nothing but the burning after image on her retinas. Behind her, he stepped back into the tub. She turned toward him uncertainly, watched as he puffed on the cigar. It glowed, revealing his face for a moment before he took it out of his mouth. The hand that held the cigar came to rest on the edge of the tub.

His eyes were like beacons on her. Pressed against the edge of the sink, she debated her options. Back to the bedroom and wait for him. Attempted escape while he was occupied. Stay and negotiate.

"You have nice tits," he said out of the blue. No, not out of the blue for him. She was standing there naked in front of him, with her arms crossed under them. "Not big or anything, just a nice shape. They look good. Feel very good."

"Uh, thanks, I guess." She dropped her arms self-consciously, then just as self-consciously brought them back up, this time to cover her breasts.

"That how it works? I compliment your tits and you cover them up?"

She dropped her arms again, knowing he could see her blush. She hated that he still had the power to embarrass her, like she was thirteen years old again, stuck for months eating, bathing, and sleeping in close quarters with him, trying to camouflage her growing breasts.

Feeling toward the door, she said, "I'm going back to bed."

"Come back here," he answered in a low voice. She wanted to pretend she hadn't heard, but that was dangerous. She returned to her position at the sink.

"Get in," he said. He clamped the cigar in his mouth and then his hands were on her, guiding her as she stepped blindly into the tub. As she was trying to figure out where to sit, he pulled her down on top of him in a slippery heap.

"That's hot water," she gasped as it lapped over her. Or she thought it was the water that was volcanically hot.

"Because that's the only way to get Dirty Girl clean," he deadpanned, so that she knew he remembered those months, too. After she'd gone weeks without bathing he started to call her Dirty Girl and then he'd held her down and washed her, his rough hands on the changing body parts that most horrified her. Imam had put a stop to that, but not before it planted certain ideas in Jack's head.

Sitting up, Riddick pulled her into his lap and used his hands to pour water over her hair. He smoothed it down her back and twisted it into a wet rope that he tied around her neck. Tightly. Then he began to work his hands over her breasts, soaping them in slow circles. That had been the beginning of several of her teenage fantasies, but in reality he went on washing the rest of her, his hands under her arms, down her back, her arms, over her belly.

"Stand up," the dragon said, exhaling smoke into her face. She obeyed and he washed her feet as she balanced one-legged with a hand on his shoulder. Then he soaped up her calves to her thighs, between her thighs. Only then, with one hand stroking between her legs and one hand lingering on her buttocks and slipping between them did he revert to his usual behavior.

"You afraid of drowning?" he said.

Until then she hadn't had any fear of drowning, but she could easily imagine herself under him, gasping, choking on water. The cigar ember didn't provide enough light to read his face.

"No," she said cautiously, exploring the floor of the tub with her foot until she found the plug. She clasped the chain in her toes and pulled. She'd hoped for it to go unnoticed, but the water began to go with a glug. He jumped up and grabbed her, lifted her off her feet.

"Please don't," she gasped, but he was laughing, pressing his face against her soapy shoulder. The cigar butt smoldered for an instant on her damp skin and went out. She felt it roll over her shoulder as he reached past her and turned on the shower. Hot water poured down on them and he made more brisk work of rinsing the soap off. When it was done, with the last of the water swirling around their ankles, he had her cornered. Against her back was the tile wall, with one of the faucet handles pressing against her ribs.

"Think you're so tricky, don't you, pulling the plug?" he said.

"Why me?" she said.

"Why you what?"

"You could run an ad or something, get someone more compatible than the fan club president. Big, menacing brute with pain fetish seeks submissive woman with strong bones who likes to be held under water and fucked up the ass." It was sheer nerves, terror on speed, that fueled the dangerous things she said in those moments.

"I'm a brute now? Is that what you thought I had in mind?"

"Something like that. Otherwise, why would you ask that while you were touching me there?"

"Why you, huh? The answer to that would fill a book." He pressed against her, hard and unrelenting, digging his fingers into her arms. She was afraid to look at the only light source available: his eyes.

Her forehead against his chest, she said, "You want me to suck you off?"

"You know, I think I do," he said and let her go down on her knees. "See? That's going in chapter one. That can-do attitude of yours."

It was safer than waiting for him to think of something to do with his erection.

* * *

Brave readers, it continues.


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer**: None of the characters belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.

**WARNING**: It's not a nice story. It doesn't even want to be nice, so it's rated **Mature** for sexual content and violence. If you don't like smut, or reading about sex or violence or violent sex or sexual violence, PLEASE DON'T READ THIS. It's not for the squeamish or the prudish.

**Kindly readers**: I'm glad everyone's enjoying the various mythological references in this. Figure I'll take Riddick and Jack through the whole Greek pantheon before I'm done. For those of you who feel like Riddick's stepped beyond some irredeemable point, I guess we'll see. I'm told Jesus of Nazareth even forgave the people who crucified him ;o) Thanks for continuing to read and review.

* * *

**NINE**

Jack ignored the opera invitation until the day of the event, when Aereon called to confirm that she would attend.

"No," Jack said. "I won't go and let them announce me as—I'm not going there to be humiliated. To be called--."

"That happened once. It won't happen again. I promise. And I insist that you come. Have some pleasure. See some beauty, experience some joy." Aereon used the same voice she used in the Council. Rhythmic, persuasive.

"You think an opera can provide all of that?" Jack said.

"No, but I know it will do you good to be among people, to live as other people do. You're not his prisoner. You don't have to hide yourself. I'm sending a formal gown for you and transport. If you won't come willingly, I'll come get you."

"No."

"This is a state occasion. The ambassadors from six other planets will be there. As the Minister of Defense's representative to the Council, your presence is necessary. Obviously, Riddick won't come. Thankfully," Aereon said.

Jack shuddered, stepped further away from the screen to compose herself. When she was calm, she said, "I can't go and have them film me for the news vids. I can't do that."

"They film you every day at the Council, how can you care?"

"Then it is on my terms."

"I ask you, for tonight, to let it be on my terms. I want you to come."

Jack made, against her will, a small gesture, a slight lift and drop of her chin, and flicked off the vid screen.

The gown arrived an hour later, an exquisite thing of gossamer black and brocade green. Vaguely, she remembered another dress, a party dress for a birthday. Her sixteenth, a lifetime ago. Two lifetimes ago. Before she had run away, when there had still been a chance she would live the life the imam had created for her. Before she'd left to look for Riddick. She still marveled at that. She had gone after him. As though chaos and destruction wouldn't have found its way to her on its own. He was right—her destiny was monsters.

She spent several minutes admiring the dress, holding it in front of her and contemplating the liquid movement of the fabric around her legs. She wouldn't wear it. There would be no punishment for her if she went to the opera in the same black trousers and high-necked blouse she wore to council. No punishment if she wore the sweater and dusty cargo pants she wore in the garden. Winna waited. She would bring whatever clothes Jack called for.

"Let it be on my terms," Aereon had said. Let it then, Jack decided. She put on the dress and Winna did her hair up into an elaborate twist that left her neck bare, defenseless. She turned slow circles in the gown, knowing the transport was in the dock, waiting for her. The dress swirled around her feet and clutched her ribs tightly, drawing her breasts up and catching her breath.

The dressing mirror faced the corner as it always did, and she could not bring herself to go to it. Some days were worse than others. Some days, she expected to discover that she was no longer visible in the shining metal, that she had become the monster from an old fairy tale: a vampire. But no, he hadn't yet managed to consume her soul yet. She was still human, but the mirror was too terrible to contemplate. She could guess what she looked like in that beautiful gown.

"Is it acceptable?" she said.

Winna considered her for several moments, her gaze moving from the elaborate hair to the little make-up that Jack had permitted her to apply. From the long white column of her throat that lay completely naked until the point at which the gown rose up to capture the swell of her breasts. Winna nodded.

* * *

It was a warm summer night or Jack might have worn a jacket to protect her bare shoulders. Instead, she mantled herself in the indifference she wore to pass through the cordon at the Council. There at the opera, the news vids were thicker, more eager than she remembered from the other times she had been lured out to such an event. When she had been something like free, before the Council gave her to him.

Aereon came to greet her and in her stunned eyes, Jack read a different assessment than Winna's had reflected. She knew what the mirror would have shown her if she dared to look. For Council, she had worn make-up to hide a bruise on her cheek and the split in her lip, but for the opera she wore only black lines around her eyes. On her neck and the curves of her breasts were the marks of his teeth. At the hollow of her throat was a swollen love bite and above it, the clear shape of his hand bruised in purple. She hadn't sucked his cock quite the way he wanted so he had instructed her.

Jack stepped into Aereon's open arms, received that hollow, fleshless embrace. For the older woman's ears alone, she said, "These are the terms of the agreement I made—the agreement you made—with him."

From her right, a vidog said, "Councilors, turn this way, turn this way."

Jack complied and lifted her chin to display herself, to show them what they wanted to see. At the entrance to the concert hall, Aereon's promise held true. When Jack passed under the arch, a stentorian voice announced, "Lady Marshal Jacqueline Riddick, Representative to the Helion Council."

"Does it trouble you less if you pretend I'm his wife?" she said to the elemental.

"You have exchanged vows of a sort, and at any rate, you must be announced in some manner," Aereon said with an elegant shrug, but she seemed embarrassed. "People expect it, and they will otherwise call you something you don't like. I'd hoped it would be less horrible than the other things."

"I think I preferred it when they called me his whore."

She didn't speak to Aereon after that, and in the formal State box, she offered polite, stiff bows to the half dozen ambassadors, a litany of names she recognized from Council briefs. To prevent accidental overtures, she kept her hands tucked safely at her sides, hidden under the black-winged sleeves of her gown.

The ambassadress from Hirka was a stately woman, her neck layered with diamonds, and her eyes too curious. As formal but friendly conversations bloomed around her, Jack kept her her whole body at guard against the clutch of dignitaries, but the Hirka envoy's gaze intruded again and again, until Jack turned to her and said, "Yes?"

"Your pardon, Lady Riddick. It is only that we have all heard so much about you. It is a great honor to be in your presence," the ambassadress said, but her eyes dropped again, intense and impolite.

"They aren't diamonds, but the Lord Marshal's marks of affection are … quite vivid in their own way, aren't they?" Jack said.

The ambassadress paled, but could not draw her gaze away. Elsewhere in the State box, someone whispered, "Marks of affection? I've seen women raped to death who looked better fresh on the slab."

"Shhh," someone hissed.

Jack turned away and moved to stand at the rail of the State box.

Below in the general hall, people murmured, pressing against each other, and strained up on their toes for a glimpse of her. A creature seen only on news vids, clad in black, with severe hair, speaking to the Council. There, that's her, they whispered. In awe: there is the Lord Marshal's wife. In horror: that's the girl the Council sacrificed. In disgust: look at Riddick's whore. She held herself tightly together as his name swept the crowd. Behind her, the dignitaries' conversations slowly stuttered back to life.

"Jack," Aereon said, "Will you speak to Ambassador Tilnos about the piracy bill that stands before your committee?"

"Of course," she said and, like a robot, turned to the man Aereon indicated. "What do you wish to know, Ambassador?"

He was a pretty man, soft, brown-haired, brown-eyed, and for an awkward moment, he offered her one soft, brown hand. Seeing that she wouldn't take it, he let it fall to his side. Stoically, he kept his gaze on her face.

"I'm curious about how the tariff levels will be used. It sounds as though a great deal of revenue will be lost," he said.

"Some revenue will be lost at first, but the scaled tariff reductions will encourage registration, ultimately reducing losses in revenue. People will register if we make registration more profitable, for buyers and sellers. That will diminish the ease with which unregistered freighter ships can transport cargo from planet to planet. Eventually, the tariff scale will increase in the normal order of things. A small sacrifice now for a larger reward."

"Couldn't a rogue vessel or crew member simply take over a registered vessel?"

"Of course, which is the reason for matched registration. Crew to ship. To prevent pirates from taking vessels from within as well as to prevent them from overtaking them from the outside."

"I'm particularly curious about the methods by which you intend to accomplish full compliance," he said.

"Full compliance? The Council perhaps dreams of such things, but the Lord Marshal does not expect it. He would be disappointed if everyone complied and there was no one to punish." There was safety there, to speak as she spoke in the Council, to put Riddick at a distance where she could make others laugh at his sinister idiosyncrasies. The most she got from Tilnos was an uneasy smile and a rapid change in the conversation.

"I must say, it's rare to meet someone who speaks as well as you do without notes. I have seen vids of your presentations to the Council, but hardly expected that your extemporaneous speech would be equally eloquent, if not more so. I fear it's not true of my own efforts. I am better with notes."

"Feel free to use them, if you have them," she said.

He laughed warmly, so delighted, so charmed that she felt sick. So that was what it was to be among people. To see beauty, to have some happiness. Had _he _poisoned her for such things? No. No. She remembered that meadow, glowing at dusk, where she had fought him for life, fought him for the world. He had defiled that place, but there were other places like it, left whole for the sacrifice of that place. In her garden, she recreated that unspoiled meadow on a small scale.

Soon Tilnos was asking her about the opera to be performed, about the natural beauty of Helios. Beaches, they spoke of beaches, as though she were someone with whom one could discuss the allurement of tourist destinations.

"I have heard that Shinouing Beach is pure black sand, with luminescent algae growth. They say it is a magical thing to see on a moonless night," he said.

"I can't say. I haven't been there."

"Not been there? Yet everyone has mentioned it to me, and you have lived on Helios how many years now? I am to go there in two days time. You must accompany my entourage. I insist."

"I'm afraid that's not possible. My moonless nights are otherwise spoken for," Jack said. In a dark room with hot stone floors and manacles and sheets sticky with her own blood. The desolate thought was in her gaze before she could call it back.

"Councilor," he said and his gaze swerved, lighted on her throat. "You say they are his 'marks of affection,' but if that is his affection for you, he is worse than they tell us."

"How terrible do they say he is?"

"They say he's a creature that thrives on death and pain. Only now do I believe what I have heard."

"What right do you have to say harsh things about him?"

"I did not mean an offense, only that you seem wounded. You are very beautiful, but you are—please, forgive such an unkind comparison—like the walking dead."

"Oh, no," Jack said, and without realizing it, she brought one hand up to cover her throat. "I am very much alive. When he cuts me I still bleed."

"And is there no one who can intercede for you? No one to protect you?"

"From him?" She laughed and it sounded strange to her, dry and rustling. "What planet are you from, ambassador? I wasn't listening when you were introduced."

"From Cernunos."

"And are you grateful that Cernunos was spared? That you weren't Converted? Are you grateful to him?"

"I—I suppose I am," the ambassador said. "We all are."

"Then don't talk about protecting me from him. If you had been told that my life was the cost to save your planet, would you have slit my throat?"

"I don't—."

"Of course you would have—if you aren't a coward. Slit my throat and stepped over my body to a hero's parade. And on a good day, I wouldn't have begrudged you my death."

"Are there good days?"

"Some days, thinking of all the people he saved, thinking of all the lives spared, I am nearly happy."

"Nearly? That breaks my heart."

The amusement that she had feigned cracked.

"Your heart? I used to love him. What do you think it's done to my heart?" She regretted it as soon as it was said. Any lie would have been better than that.

Tilnos reached out, his hand hovering, almost touching her arm.

In a clear voice that carried, she said, "The cameras are watching. If you touch me, he'll kill you."

He recoiled more quickly than she had thought possible, so quickly it was laughable. It slipped out before she could stop it, a loud giggle that went on too long and crept toward hysteria. The conversations around them went dead and all gazes turned to them. Blessedly, at that moment, the house lights flickered and people began to move toward their seats.

With curious eyes thwarted by darkness, Jack felt a surprising peace. When she slept in her own bed, she slept with a light on, but there in that populated darkness, she was at ease. Was that what darkness felt like to Riddick? Was he at peace in the darkness that frightened her? The curtain rose then and the music swelled, tugging at her. It was beautiful, as Aereon had promised. Rich layers of sound, soaring soprano, booming baritone, soothing tenor. Strings leaping and horns clashing. Lovely, terrifying, unexpected. It left her exposed and ended too soon.

The curtain fell, the lights came up, and she murmured in disbelief, "Is it over?"

"No," Tilnos said. He had been in the chair beside her all the time and she had not noticed him. "This is only the intermission. There are two acts to come, both quite bloody. General mayhem, full of despair, and nine murders. It's such a lovely peaceful opera for these talks. Now, we are to go out and be seen drinking sophisticated cocktails and talking about important things before the cameras. Powerful people at their leisure and all that. For the masses to watch on the news and be comforted."

His charm was back and he seemed about to offer his arm before remembering her warning. She pretended it hadn't happened and, closing up the place the music had opened, she followed the other dignitaries to the reception hall. It was aglitter with lights and jewels and ambassadorial medals and flashing cameras. She accepted a drink from a server with a gold tray and moved cautiously along the perimeter of the room, trying to avoid conversation.

"It cannot be comfortable," Tilnos said at her elbow. She didn't know whether to be annoyed or flattered that he had followed her. "They cannot decide whether to adore you or fear you and so they manage neither very well."

"Comfort is…undesirable. It leaves one defenseless."

"You are not that, certainly. I'm sure Lord Marshal Riddick would permit no one else to harm you."

As though naming him had summoned him, the gold-paneled doors to the vestibule crashed open, and a dozen black-clad soldiers preceded Riddick into the reception hall.

* * *

Ooooh, it's a cliffhanger! More to come.


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer**: None of the characters belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.

**WARNING**: Well, I still feel like I need to warn folks that this story is rated **Mature** for sexual content and violence. If you don't like smut, or reading about sex or violence or violent sex or sexual violence, PLEASE DON'T READ THIS. It's not for the squeamish or the prudish.

**Kindly readers**: And now we shall find out what happens when the dragon comes out of his lair and consorts with the public.

* * *

**TEN**

The glittering chandelier and sconces shuddered, sparked and dimmed, turning the air electric and plunging the hall into twilight. In the midst of it, Riddick's eyes were moonbeams on shattered glass.

People scattered, clearing the space that separated him from Jack.

"You forgot to tell me we were going to a party, Jack," he said, grinning madly, and sauntered toward her. He had not dressed for the event, wore what he always wore, that sleeveless black shirt, military pants and heavy boots, the shivs in his belt. He was powerfully built and loose-limbed like a cat. Lovely to watch. From a distance. She took two ill-considered steps back and his grin dropped away to reveal the snarl under it.

It was terrifying to face him somewhere she ought to be safe. To be reminded that he could walk among people as he chose. She never saw him anywhere but the Ministry of Defense—his lair—but there he was and closing in on her fast. By the time he reached her, the other dignitaries and news vidogs had cleared a radius around her of nearly twenty feet. As though she were a bomb about to go off. She willed herself to relax. Prepared herself to submit or to fight. Prayed to a godless heaven that she would know which to do.

"Guess my invitation got lost or something," he said and then he was chest to chest with her, breathing in her face. Softly, like a lover's endearment, he whispered, "Saw your tits on the news. Is this what you're doing on the nights you don't come to me, Jack? Showing those lovely tits around town?"

"A girl needs hobbies," she said, pure bravado on weak knees. Remembering that day in the Necromonger throne room, when he had brutalized her for his adoring audience, she decided she would fight. Let this audience remember that she had fought.

"How come you don't ever dress up nice for me like this?" he said.

"Because you'd just rip it off. That's why I can't have nice things."

The grin was back and she was sure that it would bring along his fist as a friend, but instead of hitting her, he lowered his head and kissed her. Not hard, not like the kiss that had split her lip, but like a man kissing his wife in a crowded theater. Almost loving. His mouth opening soft and hot against hers. For a moment his hands rested on her shoulders and then slipped down to the front of her gown. When he jerked it open, buttons popped and rained onto the marble floor at her feet. Her resolve to fight stalled as he took her bare breasts in his hands, kissed her throat, and then her collar bones.

She couldn't open her eyes to see the curious and horrified gazes of a hundred people. The vidogs were capturing it all, to be posted uncensored on the webs and dissected endlessly on the news. Neither could she bring herself to resist him. There was no way to fight his arbitrary moments of gentleness.

"Did you come here to humiliate me?" she whispered.

"What're you sayin', Jack? You ashamed to be seen with me?"

"It's a simple question. Is that why you came here?"

He didn't release her, but he straightened up, and when she opened her eyes he was looking at her with something she would have taken as adoration from a man like Ambassador Tilnos. From Riddick it always seemed to precede the urge to devour.

"No," he said. "You looked so beautiful on the news, I wanted to come here and smell you and touch you."

Before he could change his mind, Jack went down on her knees and began to gather up the scattered buttons, holding her gown closed with one shaky hand.

"You know I like you on your knees, baby, but you wanna do that here?" he said and she knew he was grinning, playing the ghoul for the cameras. No, he really was a ghoul and the cameras only captured it.

"If you didn't come here to humiliate me, no."

"What are you doing, Jack?"

"I'm going to … step out for a moment, to repair my dress," she said, her voice almost steady.

"And then?"

"And then if you like, we'll go into the theater and hear the rest of the opera."

The last button lay beside his boot and when she reached for it, he shifted his foot, pinning her fingers to the floor. "If I like?"

"Yes, if you like. I'm told that the last two acts are quite bloody. Ambassador Tilnos, how many people are killed in the final act?" she said. When no answer came, she turned her head, found the ambassador in the crowd behind her, his face pale.

He choked out the answer: "Nine."

She returned her gaze to Riddick, who waited with his arms crossed and a smile on his face.

"Nine murders in the final act. Matricide, patricide, incest, mutilation, mayhem, despair, and death."

"I like," he said.

When he took his boot off her hand, she plucked up the button and hurried toward the hallway to the lady's parlor, where an attendant sewed the buttons back on her dress with hands steadier than Jack's, and repaired a seam where gossamer had parted ways with brocade.

As the woman worked, Aereon passed through the door and after a moment of silence, said, "He intends to stay?"

"Is he still outside?" Of course he was. From the other side of the door came the stunned silence of a captive and inordinately excited audience. They were waiting for what terrible thing he would do next.

"Yes."

"Then I suppose he means to stay. He came here because he saw me on the news. I hold you accountable for any harm done because of it. You were the one who insisted I come here. Who sent this ridiculous dress. Who allowed those vidogs to broadcast me."

"You're right," Aereon said.

"Small comfort."

When the dress was repaired, Jack forced herself to take a brief glance in the mirror. She looked calm and controlled. So frigid that the marks of passion on her flesh seemed impossible. No one could feel that much lust for something made of ice. No one but him.

He seemed slightly unsure of himself when she returned to him. His gaze was silver hot, but he shifted on his feet as though preparing for a fight.

"Would you care for a drink, Lord Marshal?" she said. Something had to be said.

"Yeah, whiskey."

Behind the bar, someone hurried to fill a glass, and to Jack's surprise, Ambassador Tilnos crossed the room to retrieve it. He passed it to Riddick with a bow.

"A great honor to meet you, Lord Marshal," he said. "You have the eternal gratitude of the people of Cernunos."

Riddick took the glass, drained it in a gulp, and returned it to the ambassador's hand as though he were a server. Everyone was waiting.

"Will you give me your arm, Lord Marshal?" Jack said.

He gave her a quizzical look, but offered his elbow. She barely rested her hand on it, but he used his free hand to press her fingers more tightly to him. The crowd parted to let them pass into the concert hall, where the Announcer was in stunned and blessed silence until the couple had nearly reached the foot of the stairs. Coughing, he stammered into his mic: "Master of Wrath, Vengeance and Fury, Destroyer of Destroyers, Lord Marshal Richard B. Riddick, and Lady Marshal Jacqueline Riddick, Representative to the Helion Council."

A muscle in Riddick's bare arm jerked under her hand and her calm nearly dissolved into fear again. Below them, the crowd stirred at the announcement, gaping and whispering. Jack looked beyond them to the verdant stage curtains, thinking of the meadow before it was defiled.

He seemed at first to enjoy the opera, leaning forward to watch intently, his hand patting out the music's rhythm on his thigh. At the end of the third act, however, when the Fox Prince missed a chance to kill his scheming mother, Riddick slammed his fist down on the edge of the box and shouted, "Put the knife in her! Bitch is going to betray you!"

The orchestra fell into chaos and then silence, and the singer playing the Fox Prince jerked his head around and stared in alarm at the Lord Marshal leaning over the edge of the state box. He hesitated, the prop knife shaking in his hand, until his gaze drifted off stage, where someone was frantically gesturing for him to continue. After a moment, the orchestra stuttered back to life and the Fox Prince opened his mouth and sang. Riddick sat back in his chair, sighing in disgust.

"Come here," he muttered to Jack. "Come sit on my lap."

Not daring to refuse him, she settled herself on his right knee, but he put an arm around her waist and pulled her back against him.

As she was beginning to relax against him, he whispered, "Did we get married and I forgot?"

She kept her eyes on the stage, trying to remain calm and prepared.

"Because I heard them say Jack Riddick when they announced you. Did you tell them to say that?"

"No."

"Too bad. I thought that was nice."

He tugged at the front of her dress, and she caught his hand, saying, "Please, don't tear it open again."

"Then you better unbutton it," he said.

There was nothing else to do. She unfastened the buttons and he slipped his hand around her breast. Then he began to kiss and suck at the side of her neck, where the worst of the bites was still raw. She tried to pull away, but he wouldn't let her.

"Please, if you won't leave it alone, it's never going to heal."

"Please what?" he purred.

"Please, pretty please with sugar on top."

Surprisingly, he passed over it and licked at her throat, her shoulders, the cleft between her breasts, all the while rubbing her breasts in slow circles. It wasn't horrible, as little as she liked it being done in public. Jack reminded herself that there was no help for it, that she needed to turn off the part of her brain that felt the prickling gaze of strangers. The gaze of Councilors and Ministers. People she would have to see in daylight. In the chairs beyond her empty seat were Tilnos and Aereon. He leaned her back further on the arm of the chair, lowered his mouth to her bare breasts. She lay against his shoulder, let her mind go to the music, trying to ignore the steady insinuation of his hand under her skirt.

When he reached the top of her thighs and worked his hand between them, however, she went stiff with anxiety. For a while he did nothing else, simply went on kissing her breasts and holding his hand between her thighs. When the Fox Prince raped his mother and cut her tongue out, though, that seemed to excite Riddick and he pressed his hand up further. He smiled against her skin, at the betrayal of her body. Despite her anxiety, she was wet when he touched her.

In those first frantic moments, Jack turned over in her mind the things he might do. When he did none of them, she became truly afraid. If she couldn't think of what he intended to do, it was usually terrible. Instead, he slipped first one finger and then two into her. Eased them back out and in again.

Under her thigh, she felt the heat and hardness of his excitement, and her mouth watered with nausea. She held her breath, waiting for the inevitable: violence, sexual domination, public humiliation. He went on kissing her, his mouth on her breasts, her throat, her lips, with his two fingers sliding slowly in and out. Just those two fingers, curling inside her, with his palm pressed tight against her, while he made a soft purring sound against her skin. Pleasure crept closer and closer until she clutched his shirt in panic.

"Please don't," she gasped against his mouth.

"Don't what? Isn't this what you used to do to get yourself off?" Riddick said.

He didn't stop and the music roared in an ecstasy of madness as the bodies piled up on stage. In the midst of all that operatic anguish and death, came a thing she hadn't felt in years, since she had been that stupid teenager doing it to herself: a hot, gushing climax. Real pleasure untainted by cruelty. Hating herself for it, she moaned and tightened her thighs around his hand. He groaned in answer and pressed his face into her neck, breathing hard. When she dared to open her eyes, he was smiling at her.

"You're like a little vice in there when you pop," he said and kissed the corner of her mouth. He eased his hand out from under her skirt, and while she struggled to return her dress to order, he licked his fingers, deep in thought. He kept her on his knee for the final scenes of the opera, but she barely heard it. She sat in shock, feeling the steady warmth of his hand against her back. Nothing else, nothing worse, and yet she felt violated.

* * *

I don't know if I've ever made a woman cum before. It never mattered. Not what I was there for. But when I get Jack to orgasm, the way her cunt clenches on my fingers makes me cum in my pants like some horny teenager. 'Cause I'm thinking of what it'd be like to have her go tight like that on my cock or spill all her wetness into my mouth, and that's enough to do the trick. She's shaking all over, almost crying, holding onto my shirt. It upsets her that I've taken her there. It's one of the reasons I like to lick her cunt. She's always afraid I'll go all the way, make her cum, and that's something she doesn't want to do. Only now she has. Gone wet and panting for me, given up that little part of herself to me.

* * *

When the house lights came up, Jack rose from his knee and exited the box before anyone could speak to her. Riddick came after her, right on her heels, and she regretted her departure as soon as she reached the concert hall's foyer. Before her lay news vidogs ten deep and beyond that, the Lord Marshal's transport. His hand closed over her arm and he steered her through the cameras, intent on taking her with him. She might have avoided it if she had stayed. Might have delayed it at least.

"What did you think of the opera, Lord Marshal?" the vidogs shouted.

He paused at the ramp of the transport and graced them with a malevolent smile. "The music was okay, but people taking way too long to die. You stab a guy and he can still sing for five minutes, means you need to stab him again. Maybe with a sharper knife."

There was nervous laughter and then someone shouted, "And what did you think, Mrs. Riddick?"

"It was lovely and I'm not his wife." With a twist of her arm, she slipped out of his grasp and scrambled up the transport ramp ahead of him. In the bay, she hurried past the soldiers there and ran toward the narrow vestibule that led to the navigation deck. He was coming after her and whatever happened, she didn't want it to be in front of his men or news cameras.

He caught her violently from behind and pinned her arms to her sides, whispering, "You're in a mood, aren't you?"

"Are you happy? Did you get what you wanted? Showed them all that you're not the monster they thought you were?" she said in a tight voice.

"See how you are, Jack? You say you want me to play nice, but when I do, you don't like it. I was a real gentleman tonight."

"It was a lovely performance. Yours, I mean. So tender, so gentle. And now? The usual? Making me beg for death?"

"You don't ever beg for death," he sneered. He tightened his grip on her.

"What do you think I'm asking for when I say, 'Please'?"

He chuckled and bit her shoulder. "What did you talk to him about? I saw you talking to him on the live feed."

"Beaches. We talked about Shinouing Beach. He wanted to know if I'd ever been there. And we talked about the piracy proposal."

"Beaches, huh? And what did he say that made you look so mad?"

"You don't want to know," she said.

"I asked." He lifted one hand to cover her breast and she waited for him to rip the dress open again, but he only stroked her through the fabric. "Tell me."

"Are you jealous, Lord Marshal? Is that why you watch me all the time on the news vids? Make sure no one touches me."

"Jealous?" he said against her neck, sounding pleased with himself. "He was scared to touch you. I thought that was so cute, how you warned him when he was close to dying."

"Oh, he won't touch me, but what would you do if I touched him?"

He suddenly released her, and she felt anger roll off him in a poisonous cloud.

"Do you want me to hurt you?" he said.

"No."

"Then why say that? Always saying things that make me want to hurt you."

"You want to hurt me when I don't say anything. If I look at you, don't look at you. If I speak to you, don't speak to you. You pretend that there's some set of circumstances under which you wouldn't want to hurt me, but there isn't. If you enjoy this game of pretending you don't want to hurt me, that's fine, but don't imagine that I require that kind of stage dressing. I absolutely expect to be hurt." She said it all in a cold, steady voice, expecting an act of violence to cut her off, but she reached the end of it and he still wasn't touching her. Breathing steam down the back of her neck, yes, but not hurting her yet.

"It's interesting to see this up close and in the flesh. The way you talk to the Council. How you use their big words, act so cold. What'd they do to you, Jack, to turn you into such an icy bitch?" he said.

"They pitied me until I wanted to puke."

"Puke, huh? That's the first unladylike think you've said all night. I bet they pity you. Feel real bad they threw you to me like a piece of meat."

She felt the moment he slipped his tether. Then he pinned her against the wall, his chest to her back, and snarled into her ear, "You'll be a piece of meat when I'm done with you. I'll fuck you into hamburger. Nobody's ever gonna want to touch you when I'm done fucking you." He grasped her breasts hard, digging his nails into her, and jerked down on the front of the dress, no longer popping buttons, but rending fabric.

Not twenty feet away were a dozen heavily armed men and none of them came to see why she screamed. They never had and they never would.

Her fear seemed to satisfy him. He put his hands on her waist, picked her up, and set her aside. Sliding open the navigation deck door, he said, "Stop at the Garden first."

'The Garden' turned out to be her house. He let her go. Stood at the top of the ramp and watched two of his men escort her down it. Holding her dress up over her breasts, she hesitated halfway down and returned to ask, "You're not going to--you won't hurt someone else, will you?"

"No, baby, but you've had a good night and I'm trying not to ruin it for you. Now tell me what he said that pissed you off."

"He said it broke his heart seeing what you've done to me," she said, trying to keep her voice light. He laughed, a short bark and then a peal of amusement.

"And what did you say to him? You're gorgeous when you're mad like that. What did you say?"

He had ways to find out. People had heard, and he would find them. Or for all she knew, he had someone who read lips, who would watch the vid and tell him.

"I said, 'I used to love him. What do you think it does to my heart?'"

The look on his face was terrible: wild-eyed, lacking that unattainable thing, and ready for destruction. It was the way he always looked before he attacked her, but he stood two feet away, his arms crossed over his chest.

"Go on, before I change my mind," he said. She remembered other nights on that transport, when he'd come undone and brutalized her. Thrown her down on the troop deck and done it at his soldiers' feet. The two men standing on either side of her had probably witnessed it, unless they found it easier to look away.

She turned and walked quickly to the bottom of the ramp.

* * *

I mean to let her go, but I want her to keep looking at me so bad. Want to eat her up and get my soul back. I go after her, catch her just as the door to her house opens. I shove her inside and follow. Winna actually steps in between us and I knock her on her ass. No wonder I don't get invited places. I'm not a good guest.

"No," Jack says and the look she gives me is what I needed. She's scared and fearless at the same time. "I won't let you do it here. I'll go back with you, or on the transport, or fuck me out on the street if you want, but not here. Not here, you son of a bitch. This is my home."

I push her up against the wall. Saying no to me, like that's an option. She's hot with anger, boiling under my hands. She's so mad, she actually grabs my throat and squeezes.

Fuck me, but that's a new turn-on. My cock straight up salutes that crazy shit.

"Used to love me?" I say and lean into her little hands.

"That's what you wanted, isn't it? You want me to hate you, because you think hate's stronger than love," she says right in my face.

"Baby, they're not opposites."

She's not letting up with her hands and things are starting to feel a little tingly in my head. It's almost like I can see her normally. The way I saw before the shine job. She's got this halo around her and her cheeks are pink and her hair's more auburn than brown, not black at all. And those eyes. Put that lousy little moon I killed to shame. Makes me want to leave my soul in them. Let her scorch it all over again.

"No, they're not opposites, but you're wrong. Hate isn't stronger," she snarls, spit in the corners of her mouth, and I don't want her to stop. I want her to hate me a whole lot harder if that's what this is.

I grab handfuls of her skirt, to get it up to her hips, and she starts to loosen her grip on me.

"Don't stop. Tighter," I say. That makes her eyes get big, but she squeezes harder, as hard as she can. Her thumbs are digging into my throat and even my fingers feel strange as I fumble to get my pants undone. Then I'm in her. She's still wet from before and she wraps her legs around me, as tight as her hands grip my neck. It doesn't take long with her choking me, but damned if my legs don't buckle when I cum. Feels that fucking amazing. To stay on my feet I have to lean her hard against the wall, press my knees against it to keep her from slipping. Never had that happen before. Makes me wish she had more strength in her hands.

When she lets go of me, she whispers in my ear: "You want me to hate you, but hate is weak. I loved you enough to die. I don't even hate you enough to kill you."

"You will," I say, but it blows my mind that she doesn't already.

* * *

More to come


	11. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer**: None of the characters belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.

**WARNING**: This chapter is almost nice, but don't be fooled. Still rated **Mature** for sexual content and violence. If you don't like smut, or reading about sex or violence or violent sex or sexual violence, PLEASE DON'T READ THIS. It's not for the squeamish or the prudish.

**Notes**: Some of you in your reviews have expressed some curiosity about Riddick's state of mind, so I'll give you a little rundown on how I see him. (And this is based on my experience working in an offender treatment program at a domestic violence organization.) He doesn't really want Jack to kill him. Emotionally, he's like a neglected toddler, which he probably was at some point. He wants attention and so he engages in negative attention-seeking behavior. His worst fear is that Jack doesn't feel as strongly about him as he does about her. That's clearest, I think in Chapter 8, when you see his anger at her seeming indifference. He'd rather she hated him than felt nothing. This is fairly common among abusers. Without any belief that they deserve love or are capable of earning love, they settle for whatever powerful emotion they can arouse in people. And in Chapter 1, Riddick's already dismissed love as a flimsy, romantic idea. That leaves him wanting her to hate him. So in Chapter 10, to have her angry enough that she's trying to choke him--he considers that proof that she has strong, if negative, feelings about him.

Thanks for continuing to read and review.

* * *

**ELEVEN**

The Council had been in session for nearly two hours before Jack realized what Riddick had done. She was perfectly prepared to give a brief report on peace talks in the Amperi system, which were going nowhere, but when she got to her feet, the Council Speaker said, "Special Representative for the Ministry of Defense, Jack Riddick." She sat back in her chair. When she glanced at the Speaker, he looked at her expectantly. She reached out and turned her name placard around. Not Jack Parnell anymore, the sign she'd had made on his insistence. Jack Riddick, it said.

"Who did this?" she said and the mic picked up the venom in her voice, transmitted it live. Her whole abdomen felt hot and tight, her lower back throbbed.

The Speaker put his hand over his own mic and said, "It was delivered by a courier for the Ministry of Defense."

Resting both hands on the table, Jack stood and began her report on Amperi. She went on speaking in a steady voice as a horrible squeezing pain wound around her belly. When she was done, she sat down and clutched her arms across her stomach, struggling to maintain her composure until the morning's recess.

By the break, the pain was a dull, throbbing thing, and in the restroom cubicle, she pulled down her pants and found blood smeared on her thighs. Blood leaking out of her. Not the fresh, bright blood she knew so well, from some vaginal tear or abrasion. It was dark, clotted, viscous blood. She stared at it in horror for several minutes, trying to guess at what was causing it. He hadn't done anything to her since the night of the opera and that hadn't made her bleed. She wiped it away and considered calling for the attendant. Calling for a doctor.

Then she remembered what it was, what it was for. How long had it been? Not at all when she was with the Necromongers, and after that? A year in stasis. More than a year now she'd been out of stasis. Had gained some weight, was in decent health, her doctor said. Considering.

"Fuck," she said. "Fuck. Motherfucker. Motherfucker!"

"Councilor?" the attendant said softly.

Jack didn't know the attendant's name, wouldn't have recognized her on the street, but she was like a friend. The poor woman had stood outside of that same toilet cubicle, listening to Jack cry so many times. Had stood outside and said the same useless but comforting words over and over: "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Although there would have been money in it, she had never even spoken to the news shows, had never told anyone about Jack's bad days.

"I've got my period. Do you have a tampon or anything?"

"Sure, honey. I'll get one for you. Snuck up on you, huh?"

* * *

Going back to the Council room, Jack wished for the day to be over. To be able to go home and be miserable. No, that wouldn't happen. He would _request_ her presence her at the end of the session. Of course he would. He had impeccable timing for her misery. As she entered the Council room, the first thing she noticed was the silence. No one was chatting, the way they normally did between sessions. They were all standing at the side of the room, staring at a vid screen that recessed into the wall.

She saw it with no preparation. No warning.

The screen showed news footage of the main transportation dock at the Ministry of Defense. Riddick strode across the deck from his transport, flanked by a dozen Bayorn guards. The camera ran ahead of him, to watch his approach to the main doors of the Ministry's grand foyer, where soldiers lined the walls, with their guns held at attention across their chests. They stood there, unmoving, as they did every day, changing in shifts of four hours. Riddick entered, managing to emit brooding darkness even through a digital medium.

It was essentially the same footage the news showed every time he returned from some important trip. Except it wasn't.

When Riddick had nearly reached the camera, some of the soldiers lining the entrance raised their guns and fired. More joined the fray and men fell all around Riddick in a storm of bullets and pulse-emissions. He stayed on his feet, even as the bullets hit him, as the Bayorns around him went down. By then it was hard to tell who was firing at whom, if some of the soldiers were returning fire on their comrades.

Then it happened.

What had happened on Crematoria.

Black energy formed around him and bloomed like a star going supernova. Compared to that first demonstration of his ability, this one was massive, consuming the entrance in an instant, roaring through the men standing around him and obliterating the news camera. The screen went to static for five seconds, ten seconds, fifteen seconds. Jack stared, her eyes burning with the grey-white snow, and then with a sudden blip, the film returned to the beginning of the footage. Riddick again walking toward the ministry, frowning behind his goggles, soldiers bunched around him.

The loop was no more than two minutes in length and Jack watched it a second time and then a third, staring in disbelief. Finally someone said, "Jack." She looked away from the screen, to find Aereon, the other Councilors, the Recorders, the news vidogs, all watching her.

Without considering it, she turned and walked out of the Council chamber, moving toward the transportation dock, with her guards jogging to keep up. When she reached her transport, she found her pilot leaning over his nav board, staring intently at the vid screen. He jumped when she stepped onto the deck.

"Councilor? You heard there was some sort of attack at the Defense Ministry?" he said.

"They'll take him to the med center at Terullus Base. Take me there," she said and sat down in the co-pilot seat, where she had never sat. She spent the flight watching the same news loop, trying not to listen to the hysterical chatter of the news presenters.

"Apparently, this was some sort of coordinated assassination attempt. You notice, you see how it's at least two dozen soldiers who fire. They've clearly timed it, planned it," said the news reader. "The Ministry has not issued any statement yet, but we are trying to reach Lord Marshal Riddick's representative to the Council to hear her reaction."

Her reaction. As though she had only one.

Jack went through them helplessly, unable to grasp at any one for more than a moment. Shock, fear, horror, relief, regret, despair, agitation, anger. If he was dead, was she free? Was she even necessary? Did she exist without him? Did she want to?

She wanted him to be dead. It would all be over then. She would never have to look at him again. He would never hurt her again. The world would be safe. From him, at any rate.

She wanted him to be alive. The thought of his absence seemed like the prospect of learning to breathe water instead of air. More than half her life had been in his orbit. He had saved the world from the Necromongers. For her. Because she asked him to.

* * *

At the base, she passed through a clutch of security that struck her as ridiculous. Hundreds of Defense Officers—the same as the ones who had attacked him—stood outside the main medical building, but inside the guards were all Bayorn. They looked uneasy but vigilant. No one questioned Jack's right to be there, until she reached the door of the secured medical bay, where two guards stopped her, saying, "No one's cleared to enter."

"Let her in. She's had enough chances to kill me if she wanted to," Riddick said on the other side of the door.

He was alive.

One of the guards opened the door, but when Jack tried to take a step, she went down to one knee, her chest feeling hollow. Was that relief or disappointment? Maybe it was both.

"Jack?" he called. "Don't just stand out there where I can smell you. Come in here."

Grasping the door frame, she made it back to her feet. The guard pulled aside the curtain and Jack entered the room on unsteady legs.

Riddick stood with his back to the door, naked, and she counted a dozen bullet wounds, oozing blood, most on his torso, but several running down his buttocks and thighs. Centered on his spine was a pulse burn ten inches wide. Point blank circumference—the sort of thing that pulverized bone and liquefied organs. A doctor stood staring at a screen showing scans of his body, while two medical technicians flanked Riddick, both armed with a pair of forceps. While she stared, one dug into the back of his thigh and pulled out a bullet, flattened to nothing, and dropped it into a tray.

"I shouldn't be here," she said. It only occurred to her then that he might not want her to witness this. "I'll leave."

"No, I want you here." He turned around and there were even more injuries on his chest, belly, and limbs. A pulse burn spread up his neck to his jaw, and a long open gash across his scalp was from a bullet graze, she guessed.

"Are you—are you okay?" she said dumbly. He grimaced as he crossed his arms and dug a bullet out of his left biceps with his fingers.

"Come here," he said and when she approached he put the bullet into her hand. "A souvenir."

"I think I'll remember this just fine."

He put a hand to the back of her neck and pulled her toward him, kissed her deeply. Still in shock, she returned the kiss, put her arms around him, and felt his blood seep through her shirt.

One of the technicians said, "Sir? Two more."

Jack stepped back and had a moment of simultaneous embarrassment and fear. Riddick, however, stood there unashamed of his erection and let her move away from him.

"So, rough day today. You saw it on the news vids?" he said, as the technicians removed the other two bullets and began disinfecting the wounds. She wondered if given a chance, whether his body would have expelled the bullets on its own. The wounds were already puckering and drying, sealing themselves.

"That's why I came," she said.

"You came on your own? So who do you think planned it?"

"All I know is it wasn't me."

He laughed with real pleasure, then dropped his hand to his cock and stroked it. "Get me some clothes. I'm ready to go."

"We'd like to keep you over night," the doctor said. "Run some tests. A lot of tests. This isn't—."

"I'm not fucking her on a hospital bed," Riddick said, as though that answered everything. He pulled on the clothes they brought him, military fatigues and boots, while the doctor watched him in disbelief.

At the gate to the base, throngs of news crews waited for word, and Riddick obliged them. With no security, he walked to the end of his transport ramp and looked down at them.

"I'm fine," he said, and walked back up the ramp to a roar of questions.

On the flight back to the Ministry of Defense, Jack rode next to him in a jump seat on the troop deck. At one point, he reached out and took her hand. He stared straight ahead for most of the flight, while Jack stared at him. He looked alien, almost normal, in the camouflage uniform.

At the Ministry, the main entrance was still smoldering, the doors ruptured outward.

* * *

Four stories down in his hot stone room, Riddick pinned Jack to the wall and kissed her like he was drinking water in the desert. Against her belly, his cock burned, hard again or hard still. It surprised her that he had waited. That he hadn't done anything in the transport on the way there.

For a moment, he let her up for air and she gasped, "I'm asking you not to hurt me this time."

"Has that ever worked?" he said, breathing hard.

"I don't know if I ever tried it before," she said. She'd begged him plenty of times, but had she ever asked him not to?

"I'll tell you what. If you say my name when you cum, I won't hurt you. Promise."

There was a terrible silence into which she blurted, "But I don't—do you—do you just want me to … pretend?"

"The way you smell, I guarantee you won't need to pretend," he muttered in her ear. "I haven't smelled you like that since you were a little girl, but I could smell your blood when you came through the gate at Terullus."

She had forgotten, felt exposed to know he smelled it on her. He pushed her down on the bed and kissed her ravenously. Bit her neck, sending a shiver down her, making her nipples hard. His hands were rough on her breasts, stroking and squeezing but not bruising, so that by the time he got her pants down, she was cautiously optimistic that he might not hurt her much. What cut into her optimism was her own arousal, making her heart stutter and her throat tight.

He made his way down her belly with a mix of kisses and bites, and when he opened her thighs, she said, "Wait. I've got to take out—I've got—."

"This?" he said. With a deft movement, he wound the string around his finger, tugged the tampon out, and tossed it aside.

She felt panicky and desperate to separate herself from the moment. The difficulty was that when he slipped his tongue into her, lapping at her blood, it felt good. Too good. The kind of thing that was a prelude to the infliction of pain. Or just another kind of force. Another way to manipulate her, and she already felt emotionally jagged. Torn apart and barely put back together.

She put her hands on his shoulders, pushed hard, but he didn't stop. Putting a hand to his forehead, she tried to force him away. He reached up and grabbed that hand, pinned it next to her hip, so they were tangled together, their arms threaded under her leg. To keep some freedom, she kept her other hand away from him, trying to figure a new escape. He went on licking her, his tongue quick and slow, soft and hard, like an experiment or a demonstration of what he could do to her.

Looking at him between her legs in those strange clothes, she knew it was madness to trust him. He'd only done what he did at the opera to make a point. She wasn't sure what point—to prove he could do that to her, to shame her, to show her whatever he meant to show her about himself. Or about herself.

"I changed my mind," she said.

"Meaning?" he said and didn't stop.

"I'd rather you hurt me."

He paused, looked up at her curiously and then gave her a bloody grin. She shivered when he slid his free hand up her belly to her breast.

"We had a deal."

"I don't want it anymore," she said. "Just do whatever fucked up thing you want to do."

"Whatever I want to do? This is interesting, Jack, in a headachy kinda way. See, some people tried to kill me today, and here I am eating your pussy—I've heard a lotta girls like that—but you're saying you'd rather I do whatever I want?"

"Yeah," she said dully and looked away from him. She needed him to be angry and that always made him angry.

He was still stroking her breast, and when he began to polish her nipple with his thumb, she felt a sharp answering twinge between her thighs. Anticipation. She shoved at his hand, tried to force it away. A mistake.

Like a spider on a fly, he grabbed her wrist and jerked it down to her side. Then she was trapped.

"This is the fucked up thing I want," he said and returned to it heatedly. Once she tried to pull away, to use the leverage of her legs against him, but only succeeded in opening herself more. Gave him better access.

After that, she lay still, trying to find emptiness, to be empty, but she couldn't.

When he stopped, she trembled with relief and disappointment, the same as she had felt thinking he was dead, thinking he wasn't dead. He kissed the inside of her left thigh and then the right.

"It's okay, Jackie. You don't have to look at me. I know you're paying attention to this," he said.

After that, the worst part was that it felt like something she was doing to herself. Pain he could inflict, but the pleasure was her fault. Her failure to control that little bit of flesh he trapped under his tongue, stroking it until she wanted to scream. He worked his tongue in and out of her, like he was fucking her with it, and it felt like a spring in her being tightened. Her eyes filled with tears, excitement and shame competing.

She twisted against him restlessly, still trying to stop that moment. When it came, when everything in her clenched and shuddered, when the spring unwound with a snap and sent hot tendrils of pleasure through her, she denied him anything. Clamped down on her lip to stay quiet and pressed her hips hard against the bed to keep from pushing against his tongue. Still she felt how wet it was, how her body was completely willing to give him that satisfaction.

"You forget our deal?" he growled and bit the inside of her thigh.

"I told you I don't want it."

"You already made it, so we're gonna try this again." He made his voice dark, but he was smiling and that was more frightening.

She knew he would go on doing it until she submitted. He wanted to break her, and when he brought her there the second time, she felt like a cesspool of disgust and anger, with hysteria boiling under the surface. She strained against him at the last moment, still trying to fight, and gasped, "Fuck you, Richard."

He crawled up the length of her, looking ready to devour her. Pink-tinged saliva leaked out of the corners of his mouth. He wiped it away and licked at her tears, exhaling the hot stink of blood in her face.

"That was pretty goddamned sly, Jack. Gave me the chills. Nobody's called me Richard in a long time."

Defeated and already regretting her defiance, she said, "Is it okay? Will you still keep your promise? Please, Riddick?"

He smiled at that, softened a little, although his eyes were still dangerously hot. "Yeah, I'll let it slide this time."

He was good to his word. Rough and ready, into her fast and hard, but when he struck her cervix and she winced, he backed off, slowed down. She felt the thrumming energy of his restraint, how he had leashed himself. It didn't hurt at all but it was scary to think that if she weren't afraid of having him inside her, she might have enjoyed it. Mostly she was relieved to get him to orgasm without needing medical help after.

He lay on top of her for several minutes after and whispered in her ear, "We should try that again some time." After he rolled off her, he lay so still that she thought he had fallen asleep. Surviving an assassination attempt probably made for a long day. Sitting up, she scooted down the bed, unlaced the combat boots and took them off. For as big as he was, his feet were thin. The weakest looking part of him.

"What are you doing?" he said.

"Making you comfortable. Get you out of these weird clothes." He didn't say no, so she grasped the waist of the pants, where they rested at mid-thigh, and pulled them off. When she unbuttoned the fatigue jacket, he half sat up and shrugged out of it, before lying down again. She looked at him naked on the bed and even the pulse gun wounds were nothing more than raised welts now. When she touched one, he caught her hand, frowning.

"Does it hurt?" she said.

"No. And I'm not ready to sleep yet either." He guided her hand to his cock, which was tacky with her blood.

"Relax," she said, making an exploratory caress across his chest. She wanted him to be still, to be spent again quickly.

"What are you doing?"

"Just trying to—."

"You don't ever touch me."

"I won't if you don't want me to."

"Go ahead," he said, tucking one hand under his head, watching her.

She petted him as much as she thought he would allow. Ran her hands over his chest, his belly, up his thighs, hardly looking at where her hands traveled, aware of his gaze on her. She stroked her thumb over his nipple and drew it into her mouth. He laughed, but didn't stop her from sucking on it until it was a small, hard bead under her tongue. She did the same to the other, but more than that might be asking for trouble, so she moved down to his cock, half hard and bloody. She hesitated. She had always thought of menstrual blood as different from the blood in her veins. Darker, more dangerous somehow. Of course he liked it.

"Don't be shy," he said. She glanced up at him, embarrassed, and lowered her gaze before licking up the length of his cock. When she took him into her mouth, he put his hand on her cheek and said, "No, look at me." He stroked her hair back, watching her, not forcing her. Even when he was reaching the end, when he normally exerted enough force to gag her and to scrape himself on her teeth—a thing he seemed to like—he only held his hand on the back of her neck to set the rhythm of it.

Afterward, she lay between his legs and rested her head on his belly, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breath. He wasn't asleep but he was heading there. Half a dozen bullet wounds lay in her field of view. Bullets intended to tear into his guts, his lungs, his heart. She shifted her head and two more injuries came into view. A new one from a pulse gun and one that was from another life. His nakedness was new to her, still surprising, and she stared at the scar for a long time before she understood what she was looking at.

It was old, long faded to white, and lay above his left hip: a thin line, a few inches long, with one ragged end. Without thinking, she ran her finger over it.

He sat up and caught her hand, squeezed it in his until she thought he meant to crush it. Looking into his eyes, she saw fury, killing rage, and then he grabbed her throat and shoved her away. She tried to catch herself, but failed, slid off the bed and struck the floor with her hip and elbow.

He stood over her and growled, "Get the fuck out of here. I'm done with you."

"Really?" she said, couldn't help the spark of hope that gave her.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you? No, not done with you for good. Not by a long fucking shot, Jack. Just done with your stinking cunt for tonight." He dragged her to her feet, and she tried to back away from him, tried to obey him, but he held her arm tightly. Held her arm to steady her as he punched her. The blow knocked her back, pain blooming across her cheek, but he kept her standing and punched her again, creating another spike of pain in her eye. The third blow was in her gut and as she doubled over, gagging, he picked her up and carried her to the door. When it slid open, the sentries stood with their usual cautious looks, ready for anything. He dropped her on the floor in the hallway and as she lay there trying to catch her breath, he gathered up her clothes. He tossed them at her and closed the door.

She sat up unsteadily, her head throbbing.

"Councilor, do you need the doctor?" one of the guards said.

"No," she said. She faced the guards to dress. To turn her back on them, she would have to face the surveillance camera.

* * *

The look on her face makes me want to do a lot worse than punch her. Done with her? Hoping I'm done with her? If I was done with her, would she kill herself? Or would she figure there was something worth living for if I was done with her?

That scar. Fucking thing burns under my hand, like it did when it first happened. She did that, touched it and made it like it was new again. For a while I wish I hadn't sent her away. I wish I'd kept her here and … what? I promised not to hurt her. Almost kept it, too.

Makes me wish I had another shot with Jesper. I was young and careless. Killed him way too easy. He deserved to die slow.

Anybody who would do that deserves to die a slow and painful death, but I managed to walk away.

* * *

Jack may not be hard anymore, but she's tough. Two hours later she goes to an emergency Council session to give an official report on what happened. She goes with her face messed up, doesn't even try to hide the black eye, the bruises, and she manages to act like there's nothing wrong. Oh, other people stare at her and the stupid news people chatter about it, replay this crazy montage of footage: me getting shot, me fondling her at the opera and her banged-up face. I guess it turns everybody else on as much as it does me, or they wouldn't show it so many times.

Jack, though, she acts like everything is okay. She reads the official report about the assassination attempt and manages not to look disappointed when she says, "The Lord Marshal is fine. I spoke with him in person two hours ago and he is in perfect health following the failed assassination attempt."

The rest of it is nothing like what I would say, but hers sounds better: "The Ministry of Defense deeply regrets that in addition to the would-be assassins, an additional one-hundred and ninety-four employees of the Ministry, and six civilians, died in the attack. The Ministry offers its sincere condolences to their families and is making plans to offer appropriate compensation for their loss."

From the news vidogs, she answers two questions.

"The blast in the final frames of the footage—what kind of weapon is that?"

"Like all weapons development, that is classified," Jack says.

"What happened to you? Were you injured in the attack, Councilor?"

"No," Jack says, and then she picks up her telereader and walks away from the cameras.

The next morning, the Council spends the first half of the session rehashing the whole business, when it's already taken care of. The guys who did it are already dead and everybody they knew is under arrest for interrogation. If it's bigger than them, I'll know soon enough. I don't even care. Big deal. Some people got an idea that they'd kill me, because they thought it was a good way to get power. Or because they thought they'd be doing everybody a favor by snuffing me, even though I'm the one protecting them. As far as I'm concerned, they did me favor with that little stunt. Now everybody else who has the same idea knows it's not going to be that easy.

After a couple hours on that topic, the Council finally moves on to something that interests me: a proposal to build a subterranean permanent max detention center. I watch this one little clip about a hundred times. The Speaker's just recognized Jack, who looks like she's spoiling for a fight. She doesn't waste time, just says, "If we have no intention to rehabilitate, precisely what is the difference between this detention center and the death penalty? From a humanitarian perspective? Is there a difference? Having spent some time in a prison like this, I can assure the Council that there's no real difference between a life sentence there and a death sentence. We might as well spend the money on bullets. Or if you want to avoid that expense, perhaps we could line the prisoners up and let the Lord Marshal slit their throats. He's efficient and he's already on salary."

That's how she talks about me to other people. Like I'm a killer she used to love.

Her eyes are hot and piercing, remind me of how bad I need her to look at me sometimes. How bad I want her to look away sometimes. Makes me sorry I punched her, because I'm not ever going to get to watch this moment when she's so riled up but not bruised from my fist.

* * *

**Kindly readers:** Now you know Riddick's dirty secret. He wasn't always a bad motherfucker. He was just as vulnerable as our Jack.


	12. Chapter 12

**Disclaimer**: None of the characters belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.

**WARNING**: Yup, this story is still rated **Mature** for sexual content and violence. If you don't like smut, or reading about sex or violence or violent sex or sexual violence, PLEASE DON'T READ THIS. It's not for the squeamish or the prudish.

**Kindly readers**: Poor Jack, indeed. It's a good thing she's strong.

* * *

**TWELVE**

Jack rarely went to the war room for practical reasons. Riddick might sit there with his various military advisors and talk rationally, while she listened and tried to make notes about what she would say to the Council. Or he might do something. Had done things in the past that made it difficult for his advisors to look Jack in the eyes. Still, he came back from another "diplomatic" mission to Amperi and sent for her to sit in on a briefing. It went well for the first half hour, even with him making bloodthirsty remarks about what he was going to do to the Amperis and members of the Council's Defense Committee. The sort of remarks that started wars. The reason he didn't sit on the Council.

He kept his distance from Jack, and that was a promising sign. When he maintained control, he usually treated her like one of his advisors and even called her "Councilor" in those moments of restraint. It went well until he stood up abruptly in mid-sentence and walked around the table to her chair. Stood behind her, not speaking. She had been trying to translate his remarks into non-inflammatory language, but she halted her fingers on her telepad, listened to his breathing. Going faster, heavy on the inhale. Smelling her.

She dared a glance up and found the other advisors stoically looking down at the table, prepared for the worst. Even as she was grateful for those averted gazes, she hated them. Hated their willingness to look away. Their need to look away. Some days she longed for witnesses.

Riddick grasped her shoulders and pulled her to her feet. She waited for him to jerk the chair away and bend her over the table. He had done it before. Fucked her while she stood hunched over the table with her head in her hands, listening to ice in the water glasses clink in rhythm with his thrusts. When he finished, he had simply pulled her pants up, sat her back in her chair, and gone on with the meeting.

Just as she relaxed her shoulders under his hands, he squeezed harder and steered her away from the table forcibly, toward the door. Down the corridor, into the elevator, where she slithered out of his grasp, went down on her knees. When she reached for his belt buckle, he clasped her hands, not hard, but to stop her. Jerked her back to her feet, held her arms tight in his hands while he kissed her neck, smelling her.

Half dragged, half carried her down the corridor to his rooms, past sentries willing to look away. In the bedroom, she didn't know what to do to appease him, couldn't guess at what he wanted in the midst of mauling and caressing her. Since the assassination attempt he had been full of unpredictable possibilities. Kindness even.

The first time after she'd touched his scar, he had used her like he had something to prove. He hadn't cut her any new orifices, but he'd used the ones she had in a nearly unrelenting series of penetrations that left her raw. She cried after he was done, sobbing into his shoulder, hating him and clinging to him for comfort. Exhausted at last, she lay quiet against him, feeling his breath on her hair. He shifted against her, held her tight, pressed his face into her throat and shed hot, silent tears against her skin. She said nothing. With her own grief spent, his was nearly unbearable.

The last time she'd seen him, he had fed her. They sat down at his bare military table, ate half-raw steaks together and talked, before he pushed the plates aside. When he put her up on the table, he kissed her. Kissed her as a pleasure all by itself, until she was brave enough to lean into him, to slip one of her hands to his neck, to hold him close. Brave enough to remember what it felt like when she loved him. He had finally worked his way around to fucking, but he hadn't hurt her at all, except for the overlooked fork that jabbed her backside.

The first thrust usually set the tone, always rough, but not always cruel. This time was something else entirely. There between her legs, about to mount her, he hesitated. He never hesitated, but his cock was nudging against her, and she felt a mix of fear and anticipation. He eased in, slowly, but deep, and stayed there for a moment.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he said.

"Tell you what?" she managed, her hands going to his arms, trying to figure out what he meant.

He didn't answer, began thrusting against her. At the end of each thrust, he ground the base of his cock against her clitoris like he wanted her to enjoy it. As though to counteract that, he said, "Did you think I wouldn't know?"

It left her panicked even when she knew she had nothing to feel that way about. For a change, she hadn't done anything to make him angry. Nothing. As disgusting as it was, she had been a good little concubine/Council liaison lately. The kind of woman who went down on her knees in an elevator without being told to.

"What? Why didn't I tell you what? What are you accusing me of? Please stop."

"You think I can't smell it, taste it on you?" He was going faster, still not hurting her, but he pulled her hands off his shoulders and pinned them above her head. When he took one of her nipples in his mouth, she gasped. It ached, hot and swollen, but felt good. Her stomach lay like a chunk of ice under her solar plexus.

He went on kissing her breasts and pumping into her until he groaned. For a moment, she lay under him, and then dared his wrath to ask, "What didn't I tell you?"

"That you're pregnant."

It was like being punched in the gut. Worse. She felt like crying, screaming, vomiting, and somehow she managed to get him off her. Twisting out of his grasp, she ran for the bathroom and in the dark, fumbled for the lock she had never dared to use before. When it was locked, she flicked on the lights, turned them up to full brightness, and considered herself in the mirror for the first time in a long time. Nice breasts that were for once relatively unbruised and unbitten. She was a little too thin, too pale, her eyes too large and glittery. Only pretty in a desolate, consumptive way. Certainly not a face to launch a thousand ships. Nothing about her physical appearance to explain his obsession. What had she ever done that he wanted to possess her completely? No, she hadn't done anything except save his life. It was what he had done. Carried the seed of her inside himself. Now he had put his seed in her.

She wasn't sure how long she stood there, but it was long enough that he knocked on the door and said, "Jack?" Not long enough that he knocked the door down.

"I'm okay," she said. She wasn't.

She was torn between two urges. The first urge was sharp and immediate: to do violence. Against herself, against him, against the hateful parasite he had put in her. The other urge came more slowly: to flee. To take herself and that little growing animal in her belly far away from him.

"Jack," he said through the door. "You didn't know?"

When she didn't answer that, he said in more menacing tones: "Don't do something you'll be sorry for." Of course, he knew what she was thinking, and he would make her sorry if she did it. Still, the blade he used to shave lay on the edge of the sink. Convenient.

She shuddered as the slime of his semen slid down the inside of her thigh. Desperate to feel clean, she showered with unbearably hot water and lots of soap. After that, she considered herself again. How wild her eyes looked, the various bruises on her. The fresh marks of his teeth on her throat, light enough that they would fade in a day. Reaching back, she laid her hand on the place where he had made the doctor leave the bite mark to scar on her buttock. Like a brand.

"Jack," he said. She recognized it as a command. He had given her time to compose herself, but it was over. If she didn't come out, he would come in. She wrapped the towel tightly around herself and opened the door. He stood outside, arms crossed, squinting against the lights from the bathroom.

"Is it going to be a monster?" she said. She didn't care what he did. What could he do? Something worse than knocking her up with his spawn?

"It's a baby," he said.

"But were you a monster when you were a baby?"

He was frowning, but she ignored it, waited for him to answer. Waited to be answered with violence.

"No. That came later. I was just a baby. Is that what you're worried about?"

"I don't want to have a monster. I don't want to have a monster's baby."

"Are you trying to make me angry?" he said.

"I don't care. You are or you aren't and none of it undoes what's been done."

The heat of his anger was nauseating, made her stomach and head throb sickeningly.

She walked away from it, stepped past him and gathered up her clothes.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm leaving. I'm going to go to see the doctor at Terullus."

He grabbed her arm, pulled her toward him.

"Don't think you can flush my son."

"Never crossed my mind. I understand I'm not free to do what I want," she said. Of course, he would make her have it. His son.

"Then why are you going to the doctor?"

"It's what you do when you're pregnant. You go to the doctor. They do tests. They say, 'Yes, you're pregnant. Your little homewrecker is a boy. Congratulations. Everything looks fine.' Or whatever they say. I don't know."

"Then what?"  
"Nothing. I think it just cooks on its own. I don't think I have to do anything special."

He allowed her to pull her arm out of his grasp and she stepped back to pull on her pants and her shirt.

"I mean, what will you do after he's born?" he said.

"I suppose I hand him off to you and—assuming you're right that it's a boy—."

"I can smell it on you."

"Then I'll give him to you and you do whatever it is you do with a son. Teach him how to destroy things, I guess."

"No," he said. He came closer, put his hands over hers where she was trying to button her shirt. She waited, sick with waiting for him to do something. Hit her. Rape her. Kill her. She really didn't care. No. She didn't want to care but she did. Slowly, he fastened the next button on her blouse and then the next.

"No. I want you to keep him."

"Why?" she said, watching as he buttoned the rest of her blouse and straightened it on her. Of all the times he'd undressed her, he'd never reversed the process.

"Because I want you to be his mother. I want you to raise him so he isn't a monster."

"I don't want to do that. I don't think I can do that. What do I know about being a mother?"

"I want you to try." He took her shoulders in his hands and slowly walked her toward the bed, pushed her down to sit on it. He knelt in front of her and picked up one of her shoes, slipped it on her foot and tied it.

There was tension like a wall, wrapped tight around him, but he moved his hands carefully. Brought her other foot to rest on his thigh and put her shoe on.

"We had an agreement. We'll make a new one. On Oburnos, you promised me anything and here's what I'm asking for: you raise him. I'll go on protecting the world for you. Not destroying the world for you. And all you have to do is take care of my son. Be his mother, raise him right. And—."

"And?" she said, when he was silent. He tied her shoe, but kept it on his thigh. Slid his hand up inside her trousers, caressed her leg. It was hot, volatile, and when she looked at him, something ticked in his jaw. He swallowed.

"And you don't have to come here anymore. You don't have to give yourself up to me anymore, if you'll do that."

"I don't have to come here again? Ever? I can walk out of here right now and never come back? Go home and sleep alone with the lights on every night from now on? And you won't touch me again?"

"Yes," he said in a flat voice. He put her foot onto the floor and stood up, offering his hand. When she took it, he pulled her up to standing.

"Okay," she said.

* * *

She peed in a cup and lay back on the table to let the Council doctor peer and poke at her. A boy, he said. She'd have it in a little more than seven months. By the time she was dressed and ready to leave, there was already an emergency Privy Council meeting taking place in the doctor's office. Of course, they had been told, probably even before the doctor told her. There was no doctor-patient confidentiality when it came to matters of national security. At the door Jack listened to the Deputy Prime Minister in a fit of terror.

"We have no idea what this means. What it might mean for us if she has his child. He may play at being Minister of Defense, but once he has a son, maybe he'll start thinking of building a kingdom. It's the nature of men like him."

"I don't see that we have any options," Aereon answered. "If she chooses to—."

"This is an issue that supercedes the law. We didn't worry about the legal ramifications when we gave him custody of her. From where I stand, the safest course of action is to have the pregnancy terminated. Tonight," the Prime Minister said.

"I agree that is the safest thing. We don't know anything about what a child of his might do. Might be capable of," Aereon said.

"Maybe the safest course of action would be to have her removed altogether, baby and all."

"And then what?" Jack said, pushing the door open. The Councilors were hunched over the doctor's desk, looking at the results of her tests. They reminded her of Riddick and his generals, standing over the display board in the war room. Malicious intent parading under a mask of order and law.

They looked at her with alarm, with calculation. She wasn't one of them anymore. She was a problem. She considered them as coolly as she could. If it was just politics, she could play that game.

"What will you do about him after you kill me?" she said. "Because I don't suggest doing that until you've figured out a way to kill him. As he says, I stand between you and him. When I'm not standing between you, what do you think will happen?"

"You know how dangerous he is," Aereon said to the other politicians. She didn't meet Jack's gaze.

"He's not invincible," the Deputy Prime Minister said.

"Isn't he?" Jack said. "You saw what happened when they tried to kill him. He didn't die and he killed two hundred armed men with nothing more than his will. If you've forgotten what he can do, look at the classified data on Oburnos again. He killed every living thing on that planet in something like thirty seconds. Without a weapon. With nothing but a flash of rage. Blighted an entire planet in a temper tantrum. Do you think he can't do that here?"

"You're right," Aereon said. "But it surprises me that you even want to have this child."

"Like everything else about my life, it's not really a question of what I want. He already knows and he would never let me get rid of it. His son."

"She shouldn't be here. She can't be here. She has a biased interest in giving him more power," the Deputy Prime Minister said.

Jack snorted. "I killed myself once to get away from him. Do you think I relish the idea of having a monster? For all I know that's exactly what I'll have. He was never human, but he's not even Furyan anymore. Not entirely mortal. I want to live more than I want to die, but not if he's going to drag me back from the dead again so I can watch him take you people apart. You've gotten used to the idea of him being tame, but you have no idea what he is. What he might do."

"He may have survived a few dozen bullet wounds, but I doubt he'd survive a dual core nuclear warhead dropped on the Ministry of Defense," the Prime Minister said.

"Are you absolutely sure that will kill him?" Jack said. "You'd better be sure. Because if there's even a chance he might walk away from that, the Helios system won't be much more than a debris field when he finishes with you."

As Jack moved toward the door, Aereon said, "Where are you going?"

"I'm going home, eat some dinner, and go to sleep. I'll see you at Council tomorrow. Assuming you don't send somebody to kill me tonight."

They didn't try to stop her, perhaps were afraid to as she walked down the hall into the ranks of her guards. Men who reported to Riddick, not to the Council.

* * *

She didn't go home. She went back to the Ministry of Defense. Riddick seemed honestly puzzled to see her, but at least he wasn't already entertaining his fan club in her absence.

"Everything okay, Jack?" he asked. He was standing almost against her, smelling her, so surely he knew the answer to that.

"I wanted to let you know that the Council is talking about how to assassinate you."

He laughed. "Is that so?"

"Well, it started with some discussion of whether it might be a good idea to either give me an abortion or just kill me, because they're afraid you'll get ideas in your head once you have a son to pass things on to. Might want to be king once you've got a little Prince Evil. The Prime Minister thinks you're much too dangerous to go around reproducing. He was particularly fond of the idea of just offing me. Two birds with one stone, I guess."

"And where did you come down in that argument?"

"I gave them my professional opinion that before they did something to piss you off, they needed to be sure a dual core nuclear warhead really would kill you."

"That's my girl." He inhaled and his chest touched hers, prickled her skin. He leaned down until his mouth brushed against her hair. Already breaking his promise. "Why'd you come here, Jack? Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I don't want them to do something stupid that will make you do something evil. Or vice versa. I don't want you to turn Helios into another Oburnos. I promised to take care of this baby, so I'm trying to."

"I like that," he said softly. She didn't flinch when he kissed her, but gave a startled jump when he patted her on the rump. "I appreciate the warning. Now you better get home and take care of yourself. I'll send you more of my Bayorns. Some snipers for your roof. Just to be sure."

* * *

Tra la la...what will happen next?


	13. Chapter 13

**Disclaimer**: None of the characters belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.

**WARNING**: Although this chapter is relatively free from sex and/or violence, it's still rated **Mature** for sexual content and violence. If you don't like smut, or reading about sex or violence or violent sex or sexual violence, PLEASE DON'T READ THIS. It's not for the squeamish or the prudish.

**Kindly readers**: No warnings this chapter. You're disappointed, aren't you? Still, I hope I have some surprises waiting for you. And those of you who don't usually read this sort of thing, but are learning to like it? It was all part of my evil plan. Thanks for continuing to read and review.

* * *

**THIRTEEN**

Compared to what the Council has in mind, the assassination attempt seems friendly. Just a power-hungry general manipulating some idealistic soldiers. Convinced them my evil is worse than the regular kind of evil governments and armies are doing all the time. That's why they tried to kill me. Except for this one kid who turned out to be a guy who did some sentry duty for me. Saw Jack coming and going. He joined the conspiracy because he wanted to protect her. He was in love with her. Wrote her love letters he never sent. I read them before I wiped his computer and I wish I hadn't.

Hard to believe that on this whole goddamn planet there was only one person willing to die to protect Jack. Seems like a lot of people ought to be willing to protect her after what she's done for them. I used to think I was willing to do anything to keep her safe, including leave her. I left her with the imam, thinking that was a good way to protect her, from the mercs, from me. That didn't work out, so now I've got her right in my hand where I can protect her. From everybody else, but not from me. Haven't figured out how to do that yet. Don't always want to. Sometimes, even while I'm hurting her I wish I wasn't, but I don't know how to stop. Love to make her cry, hate to see her cry. Love her. Hate her. Can't stand to be away from her. Shit like that makes my eyes all stupid hot and wet like when I was a kid. Thought the shine job fixed that, but I guess not.

I got stabbed in the lung once, felt like a fire in my chest—burning and suffocating me. Same thing with reading those fucking love letters. I could tell he was thinking that after I was dead, he'd send those letters, win her heart. Maybe he would've. A guy like that with a good education, honorable service record—a real hero—he could get a girl like Jack. Disgusting, murderous bastards like me just end up having to take what we want. There was a time, I guess, when Jack would've given herself to me, but that was back when she didn't know what I was. If I was a decent guy, I would've let her stay dead and stopped the Necros anyway. If I was a decent guy, I would've done a lot of things differently, but I'm not.

I'm still the animal the Council wanted to fight on their side, but now I'm something worse.

Nothing's changed with the Council since they made me their original offer. They always wanted to use me, first to stop the Necromongers, then to protect them while they rebuilt. Now they figure they're done using me and want to throw me away. Or blow me away. It bothers me, more than I figured it would. More than the assassination attempt bothered me. I guess I thought they'd be grateful I was keeping them safe.

I'll give them this: they come when I call. Maybe they're too afraid not to, but in the middle of the night, I go meet with the Privy Council on their turf. Leave the Bayorns in the Council's foyer and go into the Prime Minister's chamber unarmed, even though they've got a dozen armed guards standing on either side of the room.

I stand at the end of the table where they sit, smelling sick with fear.

"Lord Marshal," says the Deputy Prime Minister.

"Riddick," says Aereon. Like we're friends.

The Prime Minister says nothing.

"No congratulations?" I say. "You heard I'm gonna be a daddy, right?"

Guess we're not making jokes tonight, because no one smiles.

"We've heard," says the Prime Minister.

"Jack said you weren't thrilled with the news." I haven't even had a chance to figure out how I feel about it. For all I know I already have a kid, or a couple, but I don't know. Never stuck around long enough to find out. This, though, this is the real thing.

"Surely you can see why that might alarm us," Aereon says.

"No, I can't fucking figure how you think it's any of your business."

"Are you aware that Jack is concerned—."

"Don't hide behind her. Yeah, I know she's worried that the baby is going to be a monster. That doesn't have anything to do with you," I say.

"Considering what you are, the position you hold, it is cause for concern," the Prime Minister says.

"What I am? You people wanted me. Darkness to fight darkness. Evil to fight evil. I did that. I was all darkness, all evil, and I did what you wanted. So here I am, your evil, your darkness. Now that you have me, you need to get used to the idea. Unless you'd like me to leave. Because I can do that. I can pack up my toys and go. I'm sure there's got to be some people who'd like to have me and my little army. People who wouldn't go around making threats against my wife. Hell, maybe the Amperi system is looking for the right guy to unite them."

They don't like that. There may be a few soldiers with mutiny on their minds, but most of the army I brought to Helios is still loyal to me. Most of the Helions are still grateful that they survived the Necros. They'd probably sacrifice a virgin a day to me, if that's what I asked for. The Council, though, they like to think they've got all these humanitarian principles, when all they're interested in is power. Keeping me under control.

"But the child could be—we need to do some tests. The child could be … like you. Or something worse," the Prime Minister says.

Right then I fail at keeping myself under control. Something big and nasty is starting to thump inside my chest. I walk to the door and open it, look at the handful of Defense Officers and Bayorns. I hold out my hand and say, "Give me my shiv."

One of the Bayorns hands it to me and I close the door. When I turn back to the Council, the Defense Officers are all pointing their guns at me. I enjoy that moment.

"Put the knife down," says the Defense sergeant.

"Yeah, look at me like I'm the chump who brought a knife to a gun fight, but you keep pointing those guns at me and you're gonna wish this was a knife fight," I say. It takes them ten seconds of thinking about the assassination attempt before they lower the guns.

I go to the Prime Minister and lean across the table, get closer than he'd like.

"You wanna threaten me, I'm big enough to take care of myself. But you ever threaten Jack again, or that baby, and I'll kill all of you. Maybe everybody on this planet. Not in a nice, quick way either. So, you wanna try and kill me? Here's the knife. Take a shot."

I put the shiv down on the table, handle toward him, wonder what the odds are that he might actually stab me with my own blade.

He won't take it. Won't even touch it. And that makes me crazy-mad. That he'd talk about killing Jack, talk about killing my son, talk about dropping a goddamn nuclear warhead on me, but he doesn't have the balls to pick up a knife and fight me like a man. The nasty throbbing thing in my chest gets bigger as I look into his eyes. It gets bigger until it hurts, until it feels like it's pressing on my heart. Bigger and uglier and then it just pops.

His eyes get wider, wider, and then the right one goes bloodshot, red spokes opening up around his pupil. Then his head drops on the table with a thud and blood starts to come out of his nose.

* * *

As a representative to the Council, Jack should have been notified about the Prime Minister's death before it was made public, but she could understand why no one had told her. She learned it on the morning news with the rest of Helios: possibly a stroke, results of autopsy pending.

At Council, everyone was uneasy and somber, as was fitting on a day after the Prime Minister's death. In session, they went through the required motions to transfer power to the Deputy Prime Minister. Jack sat with her stomach churning and was relieved at the session break to return to her small office, where the balcony doors looked out over a narrow, grassy courtyard. She had traded Defense's enormous wood-paneled office for this little room, where the reception area was like a closet and the foyer barely had room to hold her guards. At least it had green life and sunlight.

After only a few moments of quiet and calm, her assistant opened the door and said, "Councilor Aereon to see you."

It was inevitable. Jack stood and waited, prepared for anything.

Aereon dispensed with her usual diplomacy, her talk of nothing. She stood at a distance, nearly all in the flesh, and said, "According to surveillance reports, you visited the Ministry of Defense shortly after the Privy Council meeting held at Terullus last night."

"Yes," Jack said and almost smiled.

"And did you discuss with Riddick the contents of that confidential, high security discussion?"

"Of course. He is the Minister of Defense. As his representative to this Council, I divulged entirely the contents of that discussion, particularly as it featured a specific threat to bomb the Ministry building."

"You were there not as a representative for the Council, but as a private citizen."

"In that case, I didn't go to the Ministry to talk to the Lord Marshal. I went there to have a private conversation with my legal guardian, the man who has custody of me, who makes all of my decisions," Jack said. Aereon blushed, but frowned.

"Do you not understand how dangerous that was? What terrible things would happen?"

"You're telling me how dangerous he is? You? You don't know how dangerous he is or there wouldn't have been any private conversation last night that I wasn't supposed to tell him about. If you knew how dangerous he was, you'd have sent me some flowers with a little note to say, 'Congratulations.'"

"I concede that you know more than anyone how dangerous he is. I suppose that's why I thought you might have a little more discretion," Aereon said.

"It's not about discretion. It's about loyalty."

"Considering what he's done to you, I don't see how you can have any loyalty to him. I had hoped you had some loyalty to the people of Helios. To this Council. I had hoped you would come to view this as your home. To see us as your family," Aereon said.

It rankled, that patronizing tone, that presumption on her emotions. Aware that it was Riddick's trick, Jack stepped forward to bring her anger physically closer to Aereon.

"Loyalty to the people of Helios, yes. I'm doing my best to keep them safe. But as for you being my family, loyalty to this Council ends when you people start threatening me and this baby and … and him, even. He saved you. He may be a monster, and I may be the one who pays for the debt, but you owe him. The least you could do is have enough gratitude to treat me as a—as a person instead of a tool. To treat me like my life means something. Of all the things he's done to me, he's never threatened to kill me. He's the one person who cares if I live or die."

"He killed the Prime Minister last night," Aereon said. Jack didn't want it to jar her, but it did. Of course he had. It shouldn't come as a surprise. "He killed the Prime Minister because of what you told him."

"Since I was just repeating the Prime Minister's words, I don't really think that's my fault," Jack said.

After Aereon was gone, Jack looked at the clock counting down the time until the end of the session recess. She allotted herself five minutes for crying and hysteria and guilt. She ended up needing only four of them. Standing on the balcony, looking at her patch of grass, she felt calm.

* * *

The Deputy Prime Minister gets the job he always wanted, the Prime Minister gets his big state funeral, and not one news show ever suggests that I killed him. Of course, it helps that even after the autopsy, no one can figure out how I killed him. Hell, I'm not completely sure how it works, using that fury against one person instead of a bunch of them. They cover it up anyway, and I figure it sobers the rest of the Council up. Reminds them that they made a deal with this Devil. Still wish I'd slit his throat.

The other thing they manage to keep secret is the baby. Right up until the day Jack stands up in Council to give some report and you can actually see she's got a little bump under her shirt. The news shows go crazy on that. _Is she or isn't she? _they all ask. When she leaves Council, they shout, "Are you pregnant, Mrs. Riddick?" She doesn't answer, not even to tell them that we're not married. She used to do that, but they've worn her down.

She goes on like it's nothing, that bump getting bigger and bigger. Goes to Council every session, stands up to speak, ignores that question no matter how many times the news vidogs ask. She doesn't say a word, just about kills me laughing the way she looks at them. Pure fucking contempt on a cracker. If looks could kill, Jack'd be more deadly than me.

* * *

When Jack allowed herself to think about the pregnancy, she wondered if she'd made a mistake in accepting Riddick's promise to leave her alone. He probably would have made her miscarry by now. Mostly she didn't think about about it. There were no mirrors to show her the subtle changes in her body, and she was used to living with pain. A twinge in her side, a mysterious ache in her uterus, soreness in her breasts, and a vague queasiness. It was all pretty standard, except that Riddick was causing it through a third party now.

The pregnancy wasn't real to Jack until the fifth month, until it couldn't be hidden. It wasn't real until the first time one of the vidogs shouted, "Are you pregnant, Mrs. Riddick?" They never stopped calling her that now.

Are you pregnant? Are you pregnant? Are you pregnant? An endless litany of her personal horror. She didn't answer, but then it was real. She went home, sat stunned at the table, waiting for Winna to bring dinner.

"Eat with me," she said when the food was on the table.

Winna had never voiced a preference, but she only ate at the table if Jack asked her to. Even when they ate together they didn't really talk. A question asked and answered occasionally.

"Can I trust you?" Jack said after they started eating.

Winna considered it for several moments before saying, "The Council hired me to report on you."

"But you don't."

"No. I tell them what they already know. It's not worth it. You don't deserve that."

An absolute declaration of friendship from Winna, who had once stupidly tried to protect her from Riddick. Jack swallowed back tears, annoyed at how emotional she felt.

"I'm pregnant," Jack said.

Winna dropped her fork on the edge of her plate. It was the first time she had ever looked rattled, including the night Riddick punched her.

"The Council already knows, but I need to know if I can trust you. If I'm going to have this baby here, with you in the house, I need to trust you."

"You can trust me," Winna said.

They ate the rest of their dinner in silence.

After dinner, they sat in the parlor, each of them with a telereader on their laps. Jack's held Defense Ministry documents. Dry statistics on death. She couldn't concentrate. Across from her, Winna stared at her reader but didn't scroll down it. Wasn't reading.

"Do you have kids?" Jack said.

"Did."

"The Necromongers?"

Winna nodded.

"They took everyone anyone loved. They took everyone I loved. Including him."

Winna didn't speak, didn't look up, but Jack knew she was listening.

"He was never good. I know that. He wasn't a good person even when I was a little girl, even though he took care of me for a while. He would have hurt me eventually and probably enjoyed it, but I don't think he was really a monster. He was just an animal until they showed him how to be a monster. Showed him what he could do. He wouldn't have gone to the Underverse, except for me, wouldn't have come back the way he is, but they helped him do it. And now, now he's just my monster. He's everyone else's savior."

"Not mine," Winna said. "Only people who don't know what sacrifice is think he's a savior."

"In four months I'm going to—what? Have this baby? Raise it? Am I supposed to love it? How am I going to do that?"

"The same way anyone does. I didn't want my first daughter. Didn't love her until she was born."

After a few moments spent staring out at night falling in the garden, Jack went back to her reader. She closed the Defense document and opened another file: a book on childbirth. Since Riddick had returned her from the Underverse, she had never bothered to get her physical strength back. As powerful as he was, it had seemed useless, but she would need it for this.

* * *

More to come...


	14. Chapter 14

**Disclaimer**: None of the characters belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.

**WARNING**: Still rated **Mature** for sexual content and violence. If you don't like smut, or reading about sex or violence or violent sex or sexual violence, PLEASE DON'T READ THIS. It's not for the squeamish or the prudish.

**Kindly readers**: I see some of you are expecting a shit storm and some of you are still holding out hope for redemption. We're getting closer to one or the other. Thanks for continuing to read and review.

* * *

**FOURTEEN**

When Jack presented the Defense Ministry's proposal, the Council members looked at her as though she had finally been driven insane from being pregnant with Riddick's baby.

"This is not an acceptable solution," the new Prime Minister said.

"Perhaps it would be more acceptable to let the Amperis go on killing each other and endangering that entire sector?"

"Of course not," muttered his deputy, "but this is not the solution of a civilized society."

"Helios still had trials by champion three hundred years ago."

"Three hundred years!" the Minister of the Interior said. "You might as well suggest we go back to the days of non-aseptic surgery."

"Which I believe they still have on Amperi Prime," Jack said drily.

"That's hardly a rationale for this proposal," Aereon said.

"Admit that thus far, all other efforts to achieve and maintain peace between Amperi Delta and Amperi Prime have failed."

Muttering and denial answered Jack until she cut it off by standing up. Her belly produced the silence as much as anything she was going to say. It was still small, but undeniable, and people stared at it, mildly hypnotized.

"Admit it and I'll tell you why our efforts are failing. We are trying to treat the Amperis like Helions. That may well be an admirable goal, but it isn't working. They are not Helions. They see the world differently. They have beliefs we consider laughable and rituals we regard as brutal. It's no wonder they don't want our peace deals, when the news readers mock them. The Council may use more polite language, but we're still calling them animals."

"So you suggest that we lower ourselves to their level," the Interior Minister sneered.

"If you really want to achieve peace in that sector, I'm suggesting we engage them at whatever level they're at, without talking about lowering ourselves. As recently as twenty years ago, trial by champion was still a perfectly acceptable way to settle disputes on Prime. A little longer on Delta, but recently enough that they recognize the authority of such a thing."

"And the Lord Marshal honestly intends to stand as champion for both planets?" Aereon said.

"Is that possible?" the Finance Minister said.

"No. He intends to stand as Helios' champion. An arbiter between Prime and Delta. He's agreed to fight one hundred champions from each planet. Hand to hand combat, with weapons of choice. If he wins, Prime and Delta agree to accept the terms for peace as laid out by the Helion Council."

"It's barbarism," someone said.

"How will the contests be decided? What rules are in place to declare a winner?" someone else asked.

"Trial by champion isn't a card game," Jack said. "The matches are to the death. The Minister of Defense happens to be quite good at killing, so why not let him do some good with it?"

"It's nothing but a stunt. A barbaric stunt that encourages the bloodthirsty culture that already exists in the Amperi system. A culture that created this war," the Prime Minister said.

"Current casualty rates in the conflict are—." Jack glanced at her telereader for a moment as though the numbers weren't burned into her head. "Around 1600 a week. 1200 dead in the conflict on Delta alone. Add in the deaths attributed to the Lord Marshal's current Council-approved 'peace-making' efforts and the numbers come up to a nice two thousand a week. Two thousand people dying a week."

"But what guarantees—."

"The two sides have already agreed. They have already accepted the proposal. Their people are dying. They're looking for an honorable way to end this conflict, but the history behind it means that no one can give ground without losing respect. To give quarter is to dishonor all the dead who have already been sacrificed."

"This is ridiculous," the Prime Minister said.

"I agree," Jack said. "The idea of 200 men pitted against him is like throwing 200 fluffy bunnies into a meat-grinder and calling it a fight. Of course, they don't see it that way. Each side believes they might win and claim the rights to set the terms of the peace. Right historical wrongs."

"Is there any chance of that happening?" the Deputy said.

"If you have to ask that, I'm wasting my breath here," Jack said and sat down. Stupid baby was making her tired all the time and Riddick was still trying to kill his way to peace. Now she was helping him.

* * *

Over the vid, he spoke to her in a steady voice, mostly about Defense matters until the end, when he leaned close enough to the camera for her to see the silver in his eyes. He dropped his voice and said, "Come closer so I can see you. You know these vid displays are hard on my eyes."

She hadn't known that, but she obeyed, drawing her chair forward until she knew his screen would be full of the blinding white light of her skin. Odd that he even wanted that.

"Do you wonder why you came back from the Underverse so much stronger, except for your eyes? That your eyes are still your weakness," she said.

"Maybe when I passed the Threshold they weren't a weakness. It was all dark there. Except for you."

"Except for me?"

"It's easier to look at you in the flesh," he said. "Why don't you come visit me, so I can get a good look at you instead of always watching you on the vid. You look beautiful. I bet you smell beautiful, too. I could behave if you came to see me. Keep my hands to myself."

"Could you?" she said. He was squinting, making him look more predatory.

"Maybe. Why do you still sleep with your lights on?"

"I don't—."

"Surveillance, Jack. Your bedroom light is always on at night. Why?" he said, with his voice some strange cadence between tenderness and menace.

"I told you—to keep back the monsters that come in the dark."

"You still got monsters?"

"You were right. I always will have. It's my destiny," she said and turned away from the camera.

"Don't—don't turn away. I want to look at you."

"You can look at me all day. I spend six or seven hours a day in front of the vids at Council."

"But not for me. I want to look at you when it's just for me."

She turned back. Half-obedient, she sat where he could look at her in the thin grey t-shirt she wore, showing her neck and the curves of her breasts above her growing belly. Half-defiant, she kept her eyes down, knowing he wanted that, too. Always wanted all of her.

"Will you come visit me?" he said.

"You promised I didn't have to anymore."

"I know I promised, but will you? So I can look at you? Really look at you."

"No," she said.

"Please, Jack."

It startled her, chilled her, not knowing if it was a game, or if it was an honest plea. The strain in his voice sounded real, but both possibilities were scary. He was trying to manipulate her or he was desperate enough to say, "Please." She laid her hand on the receiver switch.

"I can't," she said and disconnected him.

* * *

It slips out before I even realize it. _Please, Jack_. Fucking pathetic. No wonder she hangs up on me. Problem is, I say it to myself too much. Since I read those stupid love letters, I imagine myself saying all kinds of things to her I would never say. Like _I'm sorry_. Fucking people who think apologies undo things when they don't do shit. You can't say, "I'm sorry," and make it like all the bad things never happened. Won't keep bad things from happening again either.

After three hours of sparring with the Bayorns, I can still hear myself saying it. She's probably long since forgotten it. Probably didn't even notice it. Not like the way I have to all the time replay her saying, "I used to love him."

* * *

It took two weeks of debate, four thousand more dead Amperis, before the Council agreed.

On Helios the trials by champion were kept as quiet as they could be, but on Amperi Prime and Amperi Delta, there was a festive atmosphere from what Jack saw of their news feeds. The matches were filmed before stadiums full of people who waved flags and cheered their champions. At first it was like a prolonged national holiday. Before the bodies began to pile up. Before it became obvious that no one and nothing could beat Riddick. Before all the gambling became wagers about how and how quickly Riddick would kill the next one.

The matches were broadcast live in the Amperi system, but the Council instituted an injunction against the broadcast of any footage of them in the Helios system. A civilized people didn't participate in blood sport, etc., went the rationale on censoring the matches. Instead, on Helios, people circulated illicit vids on the webs or hijacked signals from Amperi. For Jack it was just a matter of logging into the mainframe at the Ministry of Defense. They even had multiple camera angles.

She watched the matches in secret, hunched over the vid screen at night when she should have been asleep. She watched, knowing it was a horrible thing to indulge in while she was pregnant. That's what the books said—that she was supposed to maintain positive thoughts. Mostly that involved being in denial, telling herself over and over, "The baby's going to be perfectly normal."

Still, she felt compelled to watch the matches, although some were so brutal she had to turn away. Others she watched more than once.

Riddick was magnificent: diabolically fast and powerful, brutal and clever. Not the man who had said, "Please, Jack." Not the man who cried on her neck when he thought she was asleep. Or he was both. That was difficult to think about.

On Delta, great hopes rested on a man nearly twice Riddick's size, more than a head taller and monstrously built. Riddick toyed with him for two hours before bringing him to his knees and disemboweling him. The clean up delayed the next match for hours. Typically, Riddick fought three or four matches a day, but it was clear he was never tired at the end of the day. Left the trial field as fresh as he'd come on it hours before. Jack wondered if he could have fought them all one after the other without stopping.

He killed smiling, the stadium lights glittering on his goggles, and the violence was terrifyingly impersonal. At least it terrified her to be reminded of how personal his violence against her was. She wondered if that was why she felt compelled to watch. To witness him committing violence against strangers. To see his brutality unchecked by any concern for his opponent, because clearly he did restrain himself with her. Had never crushed her windpipe or gouged her eyes out or ripped her arm from its socket.

Over and over in those two months, Jack swore off watching the matches, but the oath never kept her from them for more than a day.

Riddick was magnanimous; let each opponent choose any weapon and fought with his physical strength alone. Used his knives and never tapped his fury. One of the Delta champions tried to prove himself more magnanimous. He insisted, demanded that the Lord Marshal choose any weapon. Any weapon.

"I will fight against you armed with any weapon," he said. He was an intimidating specimen, as large as Riddick and easy on his feet.

Riddick looked annoyed, tired of the talking, ready to kill.

Finally he nodded, shook the Amperi's hand, and said, "Darkness." Even that match was worth watching: nearly seven eerie minutes of the sounds of pain and fear and death coming over a black vid screen.

The Amperis loved him. Toward the end they cheered him instead of their own champions. Twenty thousand people screaming, "Riddick, Riddick, Riddick." After that she had to watch with the sound turned off.

On Prime, Riddick fought the only female champion. A lean, incredibly quick and limber creature, with her dyed blue hair cut down to her scalp and her eyes lined with red. She went into the bout teasing him, flaunting herself in tight pants with knives strapped to her bare stomach. She grappled with him in a way that made it clear she'd used sex to gain an advantage in matches before: catching his hips between her thighs as they fought and trying to bite him.

Riddick took five hours, wearing her down until she was wobbly on her legs. Even then she was still trying to fight, but clearly doomed. When he grinned, beckoning the Amperi to attack again, Jack felt a familiar lurch in her guts. With a shaking hand she reached out, prepared to turn off the vid screen, but unable to do it.

He was going to rape her. He was going to exhaust her and then he would push her down on the stadium field, cut her out of those tight pants, and rape her. There were no rules to prohibit that. No rules at all. To the death and whatever it took to get there.

The woman's last attack was little more than a stagger. Riddick caught her, his arm locked across her chest, one of her breasts in his hand, and pressed her back against him. In a gesture so quick Jack missed it, he slit her throat and dropped her face down on the field. It was a sobering moment for Jack, and the last of the matches she watched.

When it was all over, two hundred Amperis received a hero's funeral on their home worlds, and their leaders attended a formal signing of the peace accord on the front steps of the Helion Council. For a change, Riddick went in his role as Minister of Defense, a scowling emissary of death at the elbow of the new Prime Minister. He turned his head, looking at the other dignitaries, scanning the crowd. Looking for her, Jack realized.

* * *

Five months into not-fucking-Jack, I figure it's time to do _something_. She won't come see me, even if I beg. Even if she did, I promised not to touch her. I've already burned through the best fighters Amperi has to offer, and killing isn't taking the edge off anymore.

So I invite the fan club to the Defense Ministry. I figure it'll be good for a laugh, but the crazy bitches actually come, about twenty of them. The big bed still smells like Jack, no sense in ruining that, so I have the fangirls escorted down to one of the interrogation rooms. First thing I notice: they got a new president. Big tits in black leather and a lot of teeth. Got my name tattooed across the back of her neck.

The Bayorns stand there, watching, smiling, waiting to see what I'm gonna do. Even I don't know. There I am in a room with these twenty excited women. Every last one of them cunt-wet and eager for me. Knowing how lathered up they are gets my cock hard, but that's not much of a trick these days. Fucking stiff breeze'd do it.

I pull up a chair and parade them past me, smelling them. Makes my mouth wet, right up until one of them reaches out and runs her hand over my head. I come up out of the chair and pop her one.

"Did I tell you to fucking touch me?" I say. Hate that shit.

Lying on the floor looking at me, she says, "Forgive me, Master. I deserve to be punished."

Right then, things get more interesting, because some of them start to smell less turned on and more afraid.

I leave her on the floor and move on to the other girls. There are a few with a decent marketing strategy going on: trying to look like Jack. Have their hair done up the same way, and one of them is even dressed in plain black shirt and pants instead of some skimpy outfit.

"Show me your tits," I tell her.

She blinks once and starts unbuttoning. They're okay. Nothing to rave about. The next Jack impostor has a big R branded into her chest, but the third one is more promising, even if she has blue eyes. Nice enough tits, not too big. I turn her around, take them in my hands, and she moans when I bite her neck, whimpers when I bite her hard enough to get blood. I bend her over the interrogation table, check her out. Jack has a pair of little dimples on her lower back, where my thumbs go when I fuck her from behind. This girl doesn't have anything like that.

Still, I might as well do her. I'm five months of not-fucking-Jack hard and it won't take more than a couple minutes. Maybe won't even take that long with the way I feel.

Except she touches the blood on the back of her neck, brings her fingers to her mouth and licks them, gives me this creepy look over her shoulder.

"Please, Riddick. Please. Fuck me, Lord Marshal Riddick," she says.

That kills it. I go through the rest of them pretty quick. Two of them are real lookers. One's bony as hell, the way Jack was when she came out of stasis. One has her period, which is tempting. One has this totally fucked up thing pierced through her nose. Hard to look at. I narrow it down to two of them—a blonde with decent tits and a brunette who smells sour with fear. Grey eyes. Close but not quite. Not a green-eyed one in the bunch.

I push the interrogation table out of the middle of the room and tell them to kneel there. They do it, Decent Tits getting more scared and Grey Eyes getting more turned on. Interesting. They both look up at me and their eyes keep going to my cock, straining against my pants. Grey Eyes licks her lips.

"I've fantasized about doing this for you, Lord Riddick. I want you to cum in my mouth," she says all breathless.

"Yeah? You ever fantasize about me cutting a hole in you and fucking it?"

That throws the balance between excited and afraid way out of whack. I look around the room and see what I expected. I bet the old president told them and they didn't believe her. Now they're all thinking: would he really? The answer to that is no, but they don't know that. Half of them are staring at me with wide, nervous eyes. The other half is trying to look anywhere else. Even a few of my Bayorns look uneasy.

I look back at the two girls on the floor.

"That sound good to either of you?"

"I am here to serve you, Lord Marshal," Decent Tits says in a tiny voice. Not very convincing. Grey Eyes doesn't say anything.

It's a sorry state of affairs. Before the Necromongers, I would've fucked any of these crazy women. Nothing kinky, I would've settled for some straight up suck and fuck. Just get in, get off, get out. Hell, given a couple hours, I would've fucked 'em all. Except for the girl with the thing in her nose, and I might've done her if I had a bag to put over her head.

There were times, especially in slam, when this would have been nineteen wet dreams come true.

Now, though, it doesn't do anything for me.

I hold my hand out to the nearest Bayorn and say, "Give me your pistol."

He hands it to me and I point it at Decent Tits first, then Grey Eyes. They stare at me, but don't say anything. No begging me to kill them like they were begging me to fuck them. I like it when Grey Eyes looks over at the Bayorns, like she thinks they might help her. There's something sweet in that. Hope.

"Here's the deal," I say. "Only one of you is leaving here alive. One of you is going to suck me off and the other one is getting a bullet in the brain."

Silence, except for a few muffled gasps and a sniffling whimper from a girl in the corner.

"Which one? Help me decide."

"I'll suck your cock so good. I can see it's big, I know it's big, but I can take you whole right down my throat. I hardly have any gag reflex," Decent Tits volunteers, choking back tears. Not sure how that's really a selling point. I like some gag reflex.

"So you think I should kill her?" I say.

Decent Tits looks up from my cock to my face, then starts to turn her head to look at Grey Eyes, but stops. After a second, she nods.

"Say it. You think I should kill her?"

"Yes. I think you should kill her." Like a robot.

"You better give head as good as you claim."

I put the gun to Grey Eyes' head. She's already crying, but she pisses herself when the gun touches her skin. I've hurt Jack bad enough to make her piss herself—fisted her once—stupid, vicious thing to do. I know what pain is, but if fear makes you piss yourself, that's pathetic.

"Please don't," Grey Eyes moans. "I'll do whatever you want. I want you to use me, Lord Riddick. Please don't kill me."

"So you think I should kill her?" I say.

She looks over at Decent Tits and for about five magical seconds they look each other in the eye. That's interesting at least.

"Yes," Grey Eyes says. "Kill her."

"She's disgusting," Decent Tits said. "You deserve better than her. Kill her."

Then it's just some boring little cat fight. I hand the gun back to the Bayorn and say, "Get them out of here."

* * *

There's nothing I can do but go see Jack, even though I know it's a mistake. I don't know how big a mistake it is until I walk into her parlor. Her home, where she said, "Not here, you son of a bitch."

God. The way she looks with her tits and her belly straining against that plain black shirt she wears every day. I manage to get about five words out, including her name. The other four are something bad like: "Can't keep my promise."

She stands up and her eyes go wide and a little wild. Don't know why I ever thought I wanted my soul back. Looks fine right where she's got it.

The way she smells shifts me into some scary gear. All I can think of is how bad I wanna fuck her. Do it over and over until I can't get hard. I open my mouth to say something else and drool down the front of my shirt.

When she sees that, she puts both her hands across her belly, but there must be some animal thing in me other than the beast, some urge to protect my son, because I don't do what I want to do. Thinking I might hurt her, hurt him, that's what stops me long enough for me to get away from her.

After that, I can't go near her. We manage the Defense Ministry stuff over a vid screen, all polite and business-like. Just about drives me insane. It's like I can still smell her, like that smell is stuck in the back of my brain. Makes my cock hard all the time, and looking at her on vid screen, everything she does is porn. The way she touches her neck, sucks on the end of her telepad stylus, runs her hand over her belly when she stands up.

I jerk off until I'm raw and I still want her.

* * *

**AN:** _Almost feel sorry for him, don't you?_

For those of you wondering: this is a documented phenomenon--men experiencing a near-constant state of arousal in the final months of their wives' pregnancies. An evolutionary development, perhaps, to keep the male interested in protecting and providing for the female.


	15. Chapter 15

**Disclaimer**: None of the characters belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.

**WARNING**: Still rated **Mature** for sexual content and violence. If you don't like smut, or reading about sex or violence or violent sex or sexual violence, PLEASE DON'T READ THIS. It's not for the squeamish or the prudish.

**Kindly readers**: Don't feel bad about laughing. While he's not killing people, Riddick is supposed to be funny. If you weren't meant to laugh at the Devil, he wouldn't have those funny little goat horns and hooves. Thanks for continuing to read and review.

* * *

**FIFTEEN**

The heavy security might have been warranted, but giving birth behind locked doors and heavily armed men appalled Jack. Outside the room where she was supposed to have the baby were 50 of Riddick's Bayorn soldiers, armed to the teeth. Outside her house and on the roof, several hundred more. Surrounding streets full of combat troop carriers. Riddick had been steadily reinforcing the house for months, but now it was like a fortress. A bunker with a garden at the center of it. There goes the neighborhood.

Winna didn't offer any reassuring words, simply walked up and down with Jack's arm around her. The doctors were unbearable with their equipment and their insistence that she lie down and have an injection and their, "We're going to take care of everything." She didn't trust them, or their intentions, or any plan that involved her doped and compliant. It was the reason she'd refused to go to Terullus Base. The reason she'd worked so hard to build the strength she would need to do it on her own.

She sent the doctors away, even though the last one was adamant that someone had to stay and deliver the baby.

"What's there for you to deliver? I'm the one doing the work here," Jack said as the Bayorns escorted him out. The military nurse, who had been quiet and efficient, she let stay.

"I'm an animal. I can give birth like an animal," Jack muttered and went back to walking.

She did, in pain no worse than she'd prepared for. At the end, she even found something beyond the pain, some deep shuddering thing like pleasure, as the baby struggled with her, trying to find his way out. On her hands and knees, she strained into it, bore down, brought forth Riddick's son into Winna's hands. He squalled, purple and open mouthed, alone for the first time in his life.

When he was clean and quiet, Jack allowed one of the doctors to come back, to check her over and to glimpse the baby, listen to his heart. They wanted a sample of blood. Jack gave it to them. Jabbed him herself and comforted him when he cried.  
"He seems healthy," the doctor said, "but we'd like to run some additional tests."

"Not necessary," Jack said. She hoped it wasn't, because she didn't trust them to touch him.

When the doctors were gone, she lay back in bed, held him in her arms, and considered him carefully. He had a shock of soft black hair, his eyes were cloudy dark and his face was pinched.

"Is that normal?" Jack said. "His eyes."

"They look fine. They won't get their true color for a while," the nurse said.

"He's ugly, isn't he? Do you think he's a monster?" she said. The nurse gave her a blank look of terror.

"No," Winna said. "Babies are ugly."

"Did you want to try nursing him? Or I have formula and a bottle," the nurse said.

He had been nuzzling against her sweaty t-shirt and when Jack lifted it, he fumbled at her breast for several minutes, rubbing his face against it and licking it before he took it in his mouth. When he sucked it felt strange, draining and aching, but tugged at something under her navel. He wasn't a monster.

"I want the Lord Marshal to hear before it's all on the news," Jack said. She felt silly calling him that, but with the baby there she could see how confusing it was going to get calling Riddick _he_ and _him_.

A Bayorn answered the call and she heard him say, "Your wife, sir," as he passed the phone.

Riddick sounded calm and distant when he said, "Everything okay, Jack?"

"It's a boy," she said.

"I told you."

"Do you want to see him?"

For a minute, the only sound from his end was the familiar shuffle and mumble of soldiers on the troop deck of his transport.

"Yeah," he said. In the midst of more noisy silence, she disconnected.

"Let me comb your hair," Winna said.

The idea of being beautified for him annoyed Jack but she allowed it. Took a sponge bath and let Winna comb and braid her hair in two neat plaits like a little girl's. The nurse stood by looking less efficient and more nervous at the prospect of the Lord Marshal's arrival.

* * *

Riddick came quietly, his eyes glittering in the dim room, and inhaled deeply before he approached the bed. Jack waited for him to speak, but he only stood beside the bed and watched her. His gaze was so steady that she felt herself blushing, and struggled to look up at him. His jaw clenched when she met his eyes.

"You okay?" he said.

"Fine. It wasn't bad."

"You're bleeding."

"They tell me that's normal. Like my period. Do you want to hold him?"

He looked at the baby in the bassinette and frowned. When he didn't answer, Jack nodded at Winna, who lifted the baby and passed him to Riddick. He held him tight to his chest, and when he lowered his head to sniff the baby, a smile supplanted the frown.

"He smells good."

"Yes, don't babies smell lovely?" the nurse said.

"Smells like your cunt, Jack," he said and licked the baby's scalp. "Tastes like it, too."

The nurse blinked and took an awkward step back.

"Well, that's where he came from," Jack said.

"Bet he didn't have as much fun in there as I could, if you'd let me."

At his dark, lascivious smile, the nurse moved to the far side of the room. Winna simply turned away, and that acknowledgement of the danger he represented frightened Jack more than he did.

"You still want me to keep him for you?" She said it to reassure herself that it would be possible to give him up, but she was relieved when Riddick nodded.

"Yeah, I want you to keep him," he said softly and inhaled again. "He makes me want to kill something."

She clutched the sheet in her hands as her heart plunged. Riddick glanced at her and smiled.

"Not him. Makes me want to kill something for him. Makes me want to hunt, bring back food for him. For you."

Cradling the baby in the curve of one arm, he brought his other hand to rest on the delta of her belly, his thumb lying at the crease of her thighs under the sheet. When she tried to push him away, he didn't budge.

"You're still mine," he said. "For me to take care of. That hasn't changed."

He returned the baby to her, caressing her swollen breasts as he did it. She didn't protest that or the kiss he put on her forehead, but the three women breathed more easily after he was gone.

* * *

Later, with the baby sleeping solidly against her side, Jack watched the news—the Council, the crime stats, the agriculture report, and then there was Riddick with a ridiculous blurb under him: New Daddy. In the footage he smiled broadly, the blank surfaces of his goggles reflecting the camera lights. In answer to shouted questions, her malevolent demi-god paused and said, "A boy. He's perfect. I'm going hunting."

He did what he said, and the footage cut to him at the Terullus game preserve. Still grinning, he left behind his phalanx of soldiers and walked into the woods armed with nothing but a knife. Came out two hours later with a deer over his shoulders. The meat arrived later that day, neatly dressed and packed in ice. It startled and pleased her, that his animal nature could be turned to such a thing. That he carried an instinct in him to provide, something that a life of modern brutality had not destroyed.

She went back to Council three weeks later, with a larger entourage of guards and Winna to watch the baby during the session. Strangers sent flowers and toys and baby clothes in improbable pastels. She sent them on to people who needed them. From Riddick she received only briefs from the Ministry of Defense and more meat, so that he became a disembodied provider of food and military instructions.

* * *

Seeing Jack with the baby is like watching the world created. He's hers, the same way she's mine. Carried him in her and gave him life. That he's mine makes it feel like she's carried me in her. Feels like anything could happen. I could wake up tomorrow and be the guy she deserves. I could be worthy.

Only the world is ugly and even if anything could happen, usually the same things keep happening. I wake up the next day and I'm still Jack's monster. I'm in an interrogation room, doing the two things I'm good at: killing people and protecting people. Sometimes it wears me out being so fucking ironic.

The guy I'm working on is done. Even if I weren't going to kill him, he's going to die. You don't walk away from what I've done to him. He's just hoping for mercy now and I feel pretty sure he's told me everything. I don't need him to tell me why. Jack's my only weakness. The only power anyone has over me, so it's natural they'd go after her.

He's told me everything else. Gave up his password hours ago, so I've got all the details on their little kidnapping plan. Gave up the names of his fellow conspirators. Half an hour ago he apologized.

"We never would have hurt her, or the baby. Never. That wasn't our intention. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry," he said. Assholes and their apologies.

Now he wants a favor. Now that it's all over, he's begging me to turn the light back on. Like Jack. That bad, he doesn't want to die in the dark, even though the light is only going to show him the blood splattered on the grey walls of the interrogation room. I don't know if that's a favor or more torture, so I put my goggles back on and flip on the lamp.

He's a black man bled to grey. He isn't going to last another ten minutes unless I get the doctor back in here. I might.

"Anything else? The quicker you tell me, the quicker this is over."

"Nothing. Nothing," he gasps. "Please, please."

I think he's begging for me to kill him, but he catches his breath and says, "Is there a god? You've been. What's going to happen after?"

First time anyone's ever asked. You'd think people would be curious, at least maybe the priests and theologians, but I guess they don't want to know. Or maybe they just don't trust what I'd tell them about what I've seen. This guy, though, he trusts me. He's reached that point in a terminal interrogation where he trusts me completely. I'd go so far as to say he loves me. I am life and death, pleasure and pain. By now I've hurt him so bad that I'm his mother, his lover, his brother.

I can see now what I was trying to do to Jack.

I regret all of it. I regret nothing.

The guy is waiting for me to answer, staring at me, fighting for breath, trying to live long enough to get the answer. I reach over and turn off the camera. It's been good footage so far, even the stuff filmed with night vision. Something to put out on the webs, pretend it was leaked. A warning to anybody who might be considering doing something to Jack, or using her to do something to me. I don't mind killing people for her sake, but it takes up time. Still, I don't want this on vid.

Now we're alone, really alone. I take a rag and wipe some blood off his face, give him a little water.

"Please," he says. "I need to know. I need forgiveness. Things I've done. I need—."

"There's no god." No reason to beat around the bush. "There's light and there's darkness and there's the Threshold between the two. A door that swings both ways, but it's not a god. Look at me. Me."

He does, even though his eyes are starting to go hazy with dying.

"I crossed that Threshold twice. I've raped and tortured the one person who loved me. The one person I love. I've killed millions of people, but when I crossed that Threshold, it was like walking through a door. There was nothing but an empty room on the other side. No punishment for me. No forgiveness for me. No god."

I turn the camera back on, as he whispers, "No god. No punishment." It'll play well on the vid, even if he looks relieved, almost happy. When I stick my fingers up under the bottom of his ribcage, get ready to tear him open with my bare hands, he finally gets it. That relief turns to horror and he says, "No forgiveness?"

* * *

Riddick was the disembodied provider of food and military instructions until the day he came to see her. Jack was leaving the Council chamber during the session break, her breasts aching, when she heard a ghastly echo of fear and excitement from the Recorders standing at the back of the chamber: Lord Marshal, Lord Marshal, Riddick, Riddick, Riddick.

He stood in the foyer with her guards, smiling.

"Jack," he said. "How are you?"

"I'm fine, thank you. You?"

"Good to see you. How's the baby?"

"He's well," she said. Her heartbeat picked up, hammered in her throat, as she tried to imagine why he was standing there, with a dozen cameras on him, asking mundane questions. She'd spoken to him the day before about Defense business and he hadn't even asked about the baby.

"Would you—like to see him?"

"Yeah."

She walked toward him and past him, as his hand brushed down her back to her buttocks. She walked faster then, drawing him and the guards into her wake as she moved toward her office.

Riddick took possession of the small inner room and sat in one of the chairs that stood at the door to the courtyard balcony. Taking the baby from Winna, Jack approached and stood over him.

"That's my chair," she said. Without a word, he stood up and moved to the other one, although it put more sun in his eyes. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, watching her. The baby fussed, restless in her arms.

"He okay?" Riddick said.

"He's hungry," Jack said and sighed. Unable to meet his gaze, she pulled the blanket off the back of the chair and over her shoulder, tenting the baby under it as she opened her shirt and bra. As he tasted her, he pushed unhappily at the blanket that kept him from his other pleasure: her hair, which she usually let down for him to touch. He grunted in frustration but latched on hungrily.

Riddick watched the curtained pantomime with a frown and then leaned forward to catch the edge of the blanket in his fingers. With a single tug, he pulled it loose from her shoulder and smiled at the sight of the baby nursing. Despite that paternal smile, when he pushed up his goggles, there was that familiar silver heat in his eyes as his gaze lingered on her breast. He licked his lips.

"Like father, like son," he said.

"Except he doesn't have any teeth yet."

He chuckled and leaned back in the chair to watch her. It seemed wrong to cheat the baby then, so she pulled her hair down and swept it over her shoulder into his clasping fingers. He kicked his feet in happiness and sucked harder, looking up at her with his hazy-dark eyes.

"You don't look comfortable," Riddick said.

"I'm not used to having an audience for this. And I usually put my feet up in that chair."

"Go ahead."

He patted his knee and when she didn't move, reached down to lift her feet up to his lap. When they rested there, he untied her shoes, pulled them off, and then her socks. He slipped his fingers into the spaces between her toes and stroked his thumbs up the arches of her feet. She felt the bloom of heat in his crotch and tried to convince herself he wouldn't do anything as long as she held the baby.

He didn't. They sat in silence while the baby nursed, but when the time came, Jack struggled to unlatch the baby, to shift him to the other breast. She forced herself to behave as though Riddick weren't there, looking at her naked breasts and touching her feet. To the baby she said, "You have to switch or I'll be lopsided. Those are still the rules." He squawked as he released one nipple, but as soon as her blouse was open all the way, he grasped the other one, wriggling with pleasure and stroking her skin.

"He likes that," Riddick remarked. Spreading his knees, he slumped in the chair and pressed her feet up between his thighs.

She said the first thing she could think of: "The meat has been good. We have it for dinner every night."

"Who's 'we'?" he said.

"Me and the baby by extension. He eats whatever I eat."

Still looking at her breasts, Riddick began rubbing her feet against his erection. Somewhere between a foot massage and sexual impropriety in a government office. He leaned his head back, watching her through narrowed eyes, and smiled as he pleasured himself. Pleasured both of them. It felt good enough that after several minutes Jack flexed her feet against him and spread her toes. His smile broadened at that, giving her a knot in her stomach. It was dangerous to encourage him.

"What's his name?" he said.

"I don't know. What is his name? I assumed you would name him."

"Me?" He looked at her in surprise and released her feet for a moment. When she started to pull them away, he caught them and drew them back to his crotch.

"He's your son. Richard, Jr.?" She hoped not.

"No. He's almost two months old. You don't call him anything? What do you call him? The Baby?"

"No." She hesitated in embarrassment. "I call him Boo-Boo."

She expected laughter or a smirk, but he said, "Boo-Boo?"

"It was—that's what I called my brother." With the sun making Riddick squint, with him doing something as harmless as getting off on her feet, and the baby warm against her breast, it felt safe to tell him that.

"I didn't know you had a brother."

"I don't anymore. I guess he had a real name, but she never told me what it was. I just called him Boo-Boo. She let him die."

"Your mother?" he said.

"Yeah. And then she left, you know. They put me in the system. They called me Audrey. I never found out what his name was. If he had one."

"What was your name before you were Audrey?"

"I don't know. She called me You Little Bitch. He called me Pippi."

"Pippi. I like that." He smiled, looked almost sleepy, and went on caressing himself with her feet. To her amazement, he did that and only that. At the end, he bit his lower lip, pushed hard against her soles, and gave a low, quiet moan. All while looking at her, apparently unashamed of getting his pleasure that way, in front of four Bayorns and Winna.

Then he went on rubbing her feet in his hands, until the baby released her breast with a belch. Jack gave him the cursory burping he required and said, "He's a good eater. He's never sick."

Riddick released her feet from his lap and held out his hands. He took the baby as though it were the sort of thing he regularly did, as though he weren't more familiar with killing people with those big hands. As Jack buttoned up her shirt, he considered the baby and said, "Hey, Boo-Boo."

"What will you name him?" she said.

"What's wrong with Boo-Boo?" He didn't seem to be teasing.

"It's not a serious name."

"If he needs a serious name later, we can give him one. Right, Boo-Boo? Right now you're just a little pipsqueak who gets to feast on my favorite breasts all day. Those were mine and I let you have them, buddy. You owe me."

After a few moments, he rose and returned the baby to her, but stayed there, leaning over her. "I'll send you the briefs on my trip next week," he said.

She raised her head to ask when he was leaving, but before she could speak he kissed her. His lips were hot against hers, barely restrained, and he opened his mouth, easing his tongue into hers. She didn't resist enough to require force, but she could tell he would have used it.

"Good to see you, Jack," he said and brushed past Winna on the way out the door.

* * *

**A/N:** Anybody want to play guess the biblical allusion? More to come...


	16. Chapter 16

**Disclaimer**: None of the characters belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.

**WARNING**: Still rated **Mature** for sexual content and violence. If you don't like smut, or reading about sex or violence or violent sex or sexual violence, PLEASE DON'T READ THIS. It's not for the squeamish or the prudish.

**Kindly readers**: You poor people. I've taken you so far into the darkness that you find Riddick sweet and romantic when he's torturing people and engaging in not completely consensual sex acts with a woman nursing a baby. So sad. Thanks for continuing to read and review.

* * *

**SIXTEEN**

What Jack remembered of her brother as a baby was how much he cried, how he'd been hungry and sick. As for Boo-Boo, he was imperturbable. He only fussed if he was wet and when he was hungry, he made peremptory grunting sounds at her. He crowed in adoration at her when she smiled or kissed him, so she did it more. Held him tightly when they were alone and whispered, "You're a good boy. I love you." Nursing him still alarmed her, how at some moments she felt like he was eating her alive and at other moments it was pleasurable and made her content.

It was the only safe pleasure. Once in a state of agitation late at night, she'd pressed her hand between her thighs. The heat and wetness surprised her, a thing she hadn't touched in years. She shivered, slid her fingers in and out of herself, seeking relief. Remembered Riddick saying, "Isn't this how you used to get yourself off?" After that all she could think of was him. His weight on her. The smell of him. His hands on her breasts, soft and teasing, or hard and punishing. His mouth on all of her. Teeth on her neck. Purring against her throat. Crying against her throat. His cock slick with her blood. A sickening moment of pleasure, spiked with fear and snatched out of pain. Alone, she couldn't find how to untangle the three.

She gave up, afraid to go any further, wiped her fingers on the sheets, and lay awake most of the night.

* * *

Her house was safe, too, despite what had happened in the front hall the night of the opera. It was safe until the afternoon Winna came into the garden to say, "He's here."

"To see the baby. He wants to see Boo-Boo," Jack said.

Winna gave her a doubting look, but dutifully took the baby and carried him into the house to his father.

Jack knew he expected her to go in and see him, but she thought of that kiss he hadn't had to force, but would have. Worse she remembered the look on his face the last time he had come to her house. How his eyes had been bottomless with hunger when he said, "Can't keep my promise, Jack." Saliva running down his chin onto his shirt, unchecked, unnoticed. Purely animal.

In a state between fear and anger, she stayed in the garden, watching him in the periphery of her vision. For half an hour, he sat in the parlor, playing with the baby on the rug. Paternal in his own way: talking to the baby like he was an adult, letting Boo-Boo crawl and drool all over him. Like some drowsy lion in the shade, letting a cub tussle with him.

She forced herself to focus on the weeding and pruning, until she felt his gaze on her. When she looked up, he stood in the patio doorway, holding Boo-Boo. His goggles were still pushed up on his forehead, from the darkness of the parlor. He squinted against the sun, watching her work. Waiting for her to come to him. When he raised his head a little, she knew what he was doing: smelling her. She stayed where she was and eventually, he left.

The next visit went exactly the same, most of it spent with Boo-Boo, but some of it spent watching her in the garden. On the third visit, as Riddick was leaving, Jack watched him pass the baby back to Winna. He frowned, cutting his gaze back to the garden, and said something. He usually didn't.

After he was gone, Jack went inside. The parlor smelled of his sweat, like an assault itself. A reminder of all the times she had been under him, smelling him.

"What did he say to you? Was he angry that I didn't come in?" she asked Winna.

"Yes. He said, 'Tell her not to get too comfortable ignoring me.'"

"Is that it? That's my warning?"

"He said, 'I'm only gonna take so much of this.' And there's a meeting he wants you on conference for tomorrow afternoon."

Despite that hint of threat, Riddick went on treating Jack like his representative to the Council. He sent her briefs, discussed them with her like she was one of his generals, but he didn't come to see her again.

* * *

At nine months Boo-Boo was big, a strain on Jack to carry him very far, and already trying to walk. She took him to the Children's Day Festival at the capitol grounds, knowing it was inevitable that he would _seen_, and preferring to choose the moment herself. Until then he had been transported back and forth between Council and home under a blanket, but now his happy face and dark eyes would be broadcast to the curious, speculating public. Standing with a handful of ministers at the opening ceremony, surrounded by a sea of children eager for the games to start, Jack hiked him against her hip and smiled as best she could for the cameras.

"Goodness, he's a big boy," the Minister of Education said. He had pale blue eyes, the color of a cloudless sky. People said he'd lost his wife and son to the Necros. Like everyone else. His daughter stood holding his hand, staring at Jack intently. "I don't believe I've heard his name."

"Boo-Boo," Jack said. She raised her hand, not so much to shield her eyes from the sun as to shield them from the cameras. She could already imagine what sort of commentary would be provided on the news when they found out his name. A lie would have been better. Richard, Jr. she could have said. The vidogs didn't even care if a thing was true.

"Is that short for something?" the minister said. They were there in relative quiet, her guards at a distance, and the cameras far enough away. It was a personal question, not a public one.

"No. I just—that's what I call him. I don't know anything about naming babies. Obviously. I can't even get myself named right," she said.

He laughed in surprise, looked directly into her eyes. "I always thought Jack was a good name for a boy."

"That might be confusing," she said and glanced away from his friendly gaze.

Then the first races were called and children were running and screaming across the grassy slopes in front of the Council chambers. Boo-Boo took it all in, laughing with delight, bouncing against her like he wanted to run. Jack held him until her back ached and then she gave up and put him on the ground, where he began to dig around in the grass. At home in the garden he often searched for bugs and tried to eat them. Already wanting to hunt and kill. The Minister of Education's daughter sat down beside him and took his fat little hands in hers, played patty-cake with him. The minister watched them wistfully.

"She still misses her little brother," he said. When Jack looked up his eyes were sad.

"I'm sorry for her," she said. "I know how it is. I had a little brother … who died."

He nodded, holding back tears, and she hardly knew what to do in the face of that. She only knew how to comfort the baby.

"My brother was named Boo-Boo, too. The name thing is a family problem," Jack said. It had the desired effect. The minister laughed.

"This isn't going to come out right," he said, "but I find that really charming. That that's a family name."

"I know it's not exactly—it's not what educated people name their children."

"Now I just feel like a condescending ass. You're far more intelligent than a lot of the Council representatives. I won't mention them by name."

She was meant to laugh at it, so she did, but as soon as she was quiet, they fell into that pensive silence again. He cleared his throat and said, "Well, I feel hopeful that things will be better from here on. We'll rebuild Helios and the rest of my daughter's life will be happy."

"I hope so, too," Jack said. She felt silly, smiling at the two children, thinking hopeful thoughts. The minister shifted closer, his arm brushing against her sleeve, and she didn't pull back. He glanced down at the children again.

"He's happy, isn't he?"

Boo-Boo was smiling at the minister's daughter, pleased with the attention from someone new. He grasped her hands as he tried to stand. Seeing him contrasted against the little girl shocked Jack. He was a black crow in a field of springtime pastels. That was what people expected, but it suddenly seemed twisted to dress him in black. She wanted to blame Riddick for that, but it was her own doing.

"He is happy," Jack said and laughed at herself. "You wouldn't expect it, knowing his father."

A dark cloud passed over the minister's face and he stared at her for an uncomfortable moment, his jaw going slack. She recognized the look: what happened in the middle of almost normal conversations when people abruptly remembered who she was. Who she belonged to. For a moment, the minister's gaze shifted to the Bayorns who stood watching her. Guarding her. Then he looked down at his daughter, who was petting the fine dark hair on Boo-Boo's head.

"Lorna," he said in a tense voice. "Don't touch the Lord Marshal's son."

The girl looked up at her father in a wounded way, but slowly drew her hands back.

"He's only a baby, Daddy."

"Yes, Minister, he's only a baby," Jack said.

He didn't answer as he took his daughter's hand and led her away.

It wasn't the only awkward moment of the day, but it was reprised at the end when Jack played an official role in handing out prizes to the winners of the rope jumping competitions. The Minister of Education stood with her for it, smiling for the cameras, careful not to meet her gaze or get too close. Wide-eyed children took their prizes carefully, having obviously been cautioned against touching the Lord Marshal's wife.

Afterward, with a drowsy Boo-Boo clasped to her chest, Jack faced the vidogs, who all asked permutations of the same questions.

Is the baby healthy?

What's his name?

What's that short for?

A few deviated into other territory: Why do you live apart from your husband? Is it true he never sees the baby? To the first she said nothing and to the second she gave a curt answer: "Of course it's not true."

It was true that Riddick hadn't seen the baby in two months. Ignoring him had worked, apparently.

"I'm ready to go," Jack said to her guards and they moved her past the vidogs effortlessly, clearing the way to her transport. There, leaning back in her seat, looking at Boo-Boo strapped into his carrier, it would have been easy to go home.

A feeling she hardly recognized made it difficult. Not guilt. She didn't owe him guilt. Regret? What was there to regret? She'd made her escape and her son was normal. Longing? That was a disturbing possibility. Still the unidentified feeling persisted until she leaned forward to the pilot's intercom and said, "Take me to the Defense Ministry first." Then the feeling was replaced by simple anxiety.

Winna frowned at her from across the passenger deck, but said nothing.

* * *

Jack knew Riddick wouldn't have the decency to tell her if he was otherwise occupied, but she hoped the sentries outside his door would keep her from walking in on something with the baby. They didn't even look surprised, just buzzed her in. Of course, he'd probably been told the moment after she spoke to the pilot.

Inside the ground lights were on low, for her arrival, she supposed.

"Hello," she called uncertainly and made her way past the darkened doors of the bedroom and bathroom.

"In the kitchen," he answered. He was there in the dimly lit industrial space, sitting at the table with a telereader in front of him. Reading as he worked one of his knives over a whetstone.

"This is a surprise." He didn't look surprised. He looked dangerous and it only softened a little when she offered him the baby.

"You haven't seen him in a while, so I brought him to see you. He's almost walking now," she said quickly. For a moment, she thought he wouldn't take Boo-Boo, but then he tucked the knife into his belt, pushed back from the table and held out his arms.

"What'd you do to him?"

"He's just sleepy. He had a long day."

"The Children's Festival?"

"You watched it," she said. No surprise there. She could never decide which prospect made the cameras feel so invasive—that strangers were watching or that he was watching.

"You want some ice cream?" he said.

"You—have ice cream?"

He pointed her to the steel cooler and inside sat a small pink and white striped carton. Under the flaps lay virginal ice cream: pure white with a thick cord of dark red running through it. The label said, "Pomegranate in Cream." Feeling his gaze on her, she closed it and returned it to the cooler.

"I'm not hungry," she said, too nervous to be. "It was too hot today. It didn't bother Boo-Boo, though. He liked it."

Riddick nodded, and as he held the baby, she made herself talk. Filled up space with stupid little things: what the baby did, what he liked, what he disliked, his experiments with walking, his bug-hunting habits, how he had gummed rather excitedly on his first piece of real meat, stolen off her plate. She wasn't sure if Riddick was listening, but she was only talking to calm her nerves.

"So," he said when she went quiet for a moment. "You decide you don't hate me that much?"

"I just wanted you to see him. You asked me to raise him, so I wanted you to see that I am. He's not a monster."

"That wasn't really the question, was it? Sit down, Jack. We can't have a conversation with you standing there looking like you plan to run away."

It startled her, to be caught out doing what she hadn't even realized she was doing. She stood at the doorway, her back against the frame, her hands tight at her sides. Prepared for fight or flight. With three careful steps, she approached the table, pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down. Even then, she stayed at the edge of the seat, ready to escape.

"You still scared of me?" he said with a smile.

"I still have things to lose. Things you could take from me. I just wonder, did you ever think you might lose your power over me, making me hate you?" Stupid, dangerous thing to say.

He laughed. "How do you figure?"

"Because that's how you pulled me back. When you stood at the Threshold and called me, do you remember, the voice that said, 'Who calls her?'"

"Sure," he said. "You remember that?"

"Of course. I remember everything about that. Coming back was worse than dying. I wish I could forget it."

"Being dead was better?"

"No, being alive is much better. Being dead is dead. There's this story—I read it in the hospital, when I came out of stasis. An old Terran story, I think, and the hero goes to the Underverse, and he meets a friend of his, who says, 'I'd rather be a slave in life than be king of the dead.'"

"_Odyssey_," Riddick said.

"Yeah," she said in surprise. "It's true. Have you read it?"

"Sure. And that book with all those old stories about gods and kings. That one disturbed even me."

"Because you saw yourself in them?"

"No, because everybody kept having sex with animals and their relatives, and eating babies. Even I don't eat babies." He hefted Boo-Boo against his shoulder. "Don't have a big enough pan to cook this one in."

She smiled, fighting off her uneasiness. "Why did you read those books?"

"I read all the books you read while you were in the hospital."

"You read all the books I read?" she said dumbly.

"I still read all the books you read. Know more about childbirth than I ever wanted to, but I like the books about breastfeeding."

For a moment she wondered how he knew what she read, but then remembered that her computer was on the Defense mainframe. Everything she downloaded would be recorded and reported to him. She blushed. He must know—.

"Yeah, I know you watched me fight the Amperi Trials. Did that wind you up, watching me kill people? Knowing you were watching turned me on something fierce." She struggled to think of an answer, an explanation, but he had mercy on her and said, "So, being dead was pretty bad?"

"But dying was easier than coming back. Dying didn't hurt. Coming back was … the worst thing I've ever felt. The worst thing you've ever done to me."

"Really?" he said and raised his eyebrow.

"And you did it twice. So you read the book about war and money, too? _The Wealth of War_. What did you think about that? That's one of the reasons a lot of people didn't want the Amperis to make peace. There was more money in them being at war."

She tried to sidetrack him, but he frowned, looking at the baby in his arms.

"So how do you figure I'm losing my power over you?"

He waited for her answer, smoothing his hand over Boo-Boo's head, where it rested on his shoulder. A little patch of drool spread on his t-shirt.

"Because when they said, 'Who calls her?' and you said your name, that was why I came to you. Because I loved you and when I heard your name I couldn't turn away. Even after all the—after what—."

"After all the things I've done to you?"

She twisted her hands together in her lap, wishing she had the baby to hold. Something to shield her from his gaze.

"Even after that, when I heard your name, I wanted to live."

"Is that why you won't say it?" he said and smiled to himself in a pleased way.

"Twice that's how you dragged me back, because I couldn't help what I felt for you. What if you succeed? If I hate you enough, maybe the next time I won't answer when you say your name."

He was silent, thinking for a long time. She had prepared herself for anger, but not for that pensiveness. Finally he leaned down and laid the baby in his carrier. Boo-Boo didn't stir beyond a soft grunt as he settled in to sleep.

"Say it," Riddick said, leaning his elbows on the table, watching her.

"No."

"I can make you."

"I guess you can, for whatever that's worth to you, Richard."

He scowled.

"There's not going to be any next time. You have Boo-Boo to take care of now. You're not going to die."

"No, I don't want to die anymore. I love him," she said.

"And what about me? Do you still love me?"

She'd walked into that one. She looked down at her hands on her lap and said, "As much as I can."

"Not enough to destroy the world for me?"

"No, never that."

"I know. It's probably a good thing you don't love me as much as I love you, but how much do you hate me?" He spoke in a quiet but calm voice, as though he said, "I love you," on a regular basis. She was sure he'd never said it before.

"Not as much as you want. I hate you, but not enough to want you dead. Most of the time."

He roared with laughter, jarring the table and making her jump.

"You said it. They're not opposites," she said hotly, blushing. "Sometimes they're so close together it scares me."

He stood up and came around the table, giving off heat, breathing hard, smelling her.

"I'm glad you brought Boo-Boo to visit, but you need to go, Jack. Right now."

* * *

**A/N:** We're nearing the end, liebe Kinder. Look both ways before you cross the street and hold your partner's hand.


	17. Chapter 17

**Disclaimer**: None of the characters belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.

**WARNING**: Still rated **Mature** for sexual content and violence. If you don't like smut, or reading about sex or violence or violent sex or sexual violence, PLEASE DON'T READ THIS. It's not for the squeamish or the prudish.

**Kindly readers**: So we arrive at our final act. Hope is scary, but so is the lack of it. Some of you will be happy. Some of you will be disappointed. Some of you will be horrified. I hope at least that you enjoyed getting to wherever you're going.

* * *

**SEVENTEEN—Ariadne and the Minotaur**

Jack put her hand on the edge of the table to steady herself, to stand, but Riddick leaned over her, his breath hot on her neck.

His voice was a low rumble: "You know what I think about, Jack? I think about how the next time you won't come into the house to see me, I could walk into your garden and carry you inside. I could rip your clothes off, throw you down on the floor and fuck you until you're screaming, begging for me to stop. Hell, I could walk into Council in front of the news cameras and rape you while the Minister of Agriculture drones on about farm subsidies. And no one would help you. You wouldn't even ask for help, knowing what I'd do to anyone who got in my way."

His voice was so full of menace that her stomach turned violently. What he said was true and she was so stupid that she had come there willingly.

"Just don't hurt me," she said.

"That's why I don't come to see Boo-Boo anymore, because it's just a matter of time before I break my promise to leave you alone. There's no way I can keep that promise forever, but tonight, it's still under control. So you better leave. While you can."

She swallowed convulsively and finally managed to get the words out: "I'm asking you not to hurt me if I stay."

He brought his hands to rest on the table on either side of her chair, trapping her. Then he wasn't just breathing hard. He was panting against her neck.

"Jack, baby, did you come here because you want me to fuck you?"

"If you want to," she whispered.

"If I want to. If I want to? I watch you on the news, with my cock so hard it feels like I'm losing my mind. Come to your house, knowing you can't even stand to be in the same room with me. Just so I can smell you, knowing how dangerous it is. Spend a lot of time thinking about what I'm going to do to you once I lose control. Thinking about how sweet it's going to be when I break that flimsy little promise. How one of these days I'm gonna show up at your house and fuck you black and blue. But I gotta say, this is much better than anything I was imagining. How you're here on your own, offering yourself to me."

His lips brushed against her neck and one hand came to rest on her knee and moved up her thigh. The urge to flee had returned, but when she stood up, she was already in his grasp. One hand clasped the back of her neck and the other pressed hard between her thighs, as he kissed her throat with an open mouth.

She hated herself for it. His sinister suggestions made her flesh crawl, but she was there of her own will, knowing what he would do if she stayed. Her knees felt weak, because he terrified her and because his hand between her legs aroused her. Had he finally trained her to like it? Had she learned to enjoy his teeth in her flesh, his rough hands grasping her, his straining weight on top of her? Had fear and pain become an acceptable part of pleasure? A necessary part? Why was she there?

Because of the Minister of Education. Because no other man was ever going to touch her. Because every man who ever looked at her was going to turn away in disgust or fear. Because at least Riddick wanted her. Not in any sane, normal way, but he wanted her.

He pushed her against the edge of the counter, jerked open her shirt and closed his mouth over her left breast. It was a terrifying contrast, the way her milk released in his mouth and the answering dampness between her thighs. It wasn't what she felt when she nursed Boo-Boo, but it was darkly related to that sensation.

"Just promise you won't hurt me. I don't mind if you're rough, but don't hurt me," she said, struggling to get the words out while he was still capable of hearing them.

He pressed against her hard and groaned into her neck. It was a sickening moment, as he was deciding whether to make that promise. Just below her ear, he sank his teeth into her neck, and then relented.

"It's the same deal as before. I won't hurt you and you say my name when you cum. For real this time. Not Richard. Riddick. Okay?"

"Okay. Yes, R—." She intended to say it then, as a gesture of good faith, but it stalled in her throat and he was already devouring her.

"Wait, wait," she said, as he moved her to the table and popped the button on her trousers.

"No waiting," he snarled against her throat and bit her harder.

"Not in here. Boo-Boo."

Riddick looked at her blankly for a moment and then glanced at the sleeping baby. He tossed her over his shoulder, stepped past his son, and carried her toward the bedroom. As he went, he flicked off the light switch, throwing everything into darkness. She wanted to ask for the lamp, but there was no time to ask once he put her on the bed. In the darkness he was simply an enormous shape, pressing on her, pawing at her, biting her. A monster.

"Please," she tried to say, to remind him he had made a promise, but he swallowed the word out of her mouth. Swallowed her breath, nearly swallowed her whole. The initial onslaught was so brutal that she fought him, made him use force to get what he wanted. Clawed and punched at him until he grabbed her hands and pinned them down.

When it was over, he lay on top of her for a long time, his breath slowing in her ear, while she fought tears and disgust.

"You been working out? That kidney punch actually stung a little," he said against her shoulder.

"You fucking bastard. I don't know why I thought I could trust you to keep one simple promise. Get off me."

When he pushed himself up, she nearly cried with relief, thinking he might let her go, but when she tried to move away from him, he caught her arm. She struck at him futilely in the dark.

"You promised not to hurt me and that—that—you do that?"

He caught her other arm, forced her back down on the bed, and she cried, anger and fear burning hot in her chest. She couldn't get away from him and in the dark she didn't know what he was doing. He pinned her under him at a strange angle, lying across her, and released one of her arms. It occurred to her then that he was reaching under the bed for something. The manacles.

"No," she said and grabbed at the headboard with her free hand, trying to gain leverage against him. "Not again. If you put those things on me again, I'll find a way to get away from you. You think I can't, but I will. I will."

"It's okay, baby." His voice was muffled.

"It's not okay," she hissed. She wanted to scream, but didn't want to wake Boo-Boo to that.

Then the sun rose and cast back the darkness.

The day clock he'd gotten for her spilled soft yellow light out from under the bed. That was what he'd been reaching for. He pulled himself back up on the bed, but still held her under him.

"Let me go," she said.

"I didn't mean for that to happen." That was what his mouth said, but his eyes were still full of that crazed, consuming lust she remembered so well. The kind that couldn't be dissuaded with begging or tears.

"Really? All the times you raped me, but you didn't mean for this one to happen?"

He licked the tears from her cheeks, made a pleased sound. The scared part of her wanted to fight him, to go on resisting, but the calm part wondered if she ought to let him do what he wanted so that she could get out of there in one piece. Take Boo-Boo, get out, and never come back. Lesson learned. When Riddick released her arms, she rose on her elbows and tried to get out from under him. That quickly, he grabbed her again.

"I didn't _mean_ for a lot of them to happen. A lot of things I wish I hadn't done to you. Lot of other things I want to do again. I told you I couldn't stay away from you. How I couldn't control myself. It's been a long time, Jack."

"It hasn't been that long." She choked down her tears and tried to get her control back. He was watching her in a predatory way, his gaze on her neck. He leaned forward and licked at the blood that she felt trickling down to her shoulder.

"Let me tell you," he said between licks. "The last year and a half was really fucking long."

"I know you sent for your fan club—it's on the Ministry's security log—so don't tell me you've been doing without all this time." The snideness was a good shield, a way to remind herself that giving in to terror was not useful.

"Did you look at the surveillance or just at the security log? Because I didn't fuck 'em. I told you, Jack. Other women don't interest me. I want you. I promise this time, it'll be better. I'll be better."

He stopped licking her and eased back to look into her eyes. For a moment his gaze softened and he said, "Before. In the kitchen, you wanted me. You were here because you wanted me, and your cunt was hot in my hand and you were breathing hard. Yeah, you were a little scared, but you wanted me to fuck you. No reason we can't get back to there."

She could think of several of them, but he was still holding her down, and playing along seemed like the best way to get through it. So she didn't protest when he shifted a hand to her breasts and kissed her neck. Better to simply wait it out.

When he slid further down her and pressed his face against her breasts, she was prepared for him to bite her. Instead, he rubbed his cheek and his chin and his nose and then the corners of his mouth and his lips against one nipple and then the other. He did it so slowly and tenderly that she lifted her head and looked at him in disbelief.

He was in a trance of pleasure, his mouth a little open, his eyes half-closed, hazy silver, as he made lazy, erratic circles against her breasts. The stubble on his face prickled her skin, contrasting against the softness of his lips. He breathed slowly, heavily, with one of his hands tangled in her hair and the other stroking along the side of her breast. It was the same combination of sensations Boo-Boo enjoyed, and like him, Riddick licked her, tasted her for a long time before he took her nipple into his mouth. Like father, like son, she thought, but it wasn't true. He had never nursed at his mother's breast, had been thrown away. That bleak thought and the echo of Boo-Boo's pleasure returned her to the moment in the kitchen.

Capable of desiring a monster. More than a little afraid but wanting.

His hand tightened in her hair and he whispered against her skin, "I smell you getting wet." The hand that had been stroking her breast moved between her thighs. He pushed his fingers into her wetness, unerringly found the shameful place he always bruised high in the vault of her vagina. It made her moan, humiliated her, how it was more pleasurable after he hurt her. It felt better than when she'd done it to herself. Angry at both of them, what he'd done, what she'd let him do, she grasped his shoulders, shoved at him. Tried to push him away and when that didn't work, tried to push him lower.

He looked up with grin and said, "You pretend you don't like it, but you want me to eat your pussy, don't you?"

"You owe me," she said hoarsely. She was not at all sure that was how she wanted to be repaid, but she wanted the pleasure all the same. If she couldn't satisfy herself, let him do it.

She pushed at him again, until he went down on his knees and pulled her to the edge of the bed. There, he rubbed his face against her belly, her thighs, her pubic hair. For the first time she wasn't afraid when his olfactory response kicked in: a long slippery rope of saliva that he didn't wipe away. She wanted the desire in him that was animal, not polluted by what kind of man he was. She opened her legs wider, put her hand to the back of his head, brought him to her, and tightened her thighs on him.

He went at her in earnest, as though he meant to devour her, and if he used his teeth on her, it wasn't enough to distract her from his tongue. Just enough to remind her of his restraint. She pushed toward him, pulled at him, trying to get him closer when he was already as close as he could get. When she rubbed her hand against the grain of stubble on the back of his head, he growled but didn't stop.

Prepared for it to go wrong, she struggled to remember to breathe, and without realizing it, dug her fingernails into him.

"Slow down," she gasped.

He obeyed. Faster or slower, harder or softer, as she dictated, and at the end, when she panted, "Yes. There. That. That." Strained toward him, dug her heels into his back, and lifted her hips off the bed in an involuntary thrust to get at what she wanted. She didn't say his name; he hadn't earned it. Her climax was a wordless, violent cry of satisfaction.

As she lay gasping and undone, he rose up triumphant, wearing a feral smile, and pulled off his t-shirt. Wadding it up, he wiped his dripping face with it. As he took off his boots and pants, he returned her gaze with an unhinged look, not just hungry but lacking, wanting her soul. Then she was afraid. His cock stood out like a weapon, a thing he intended to use on her, and he seemed to be trying to decide exactly how. She drew her legs closed and scooted away from him, her body's natural reaction. He grabbed her calves, halting her escape, and dragged her toward him.

"No, Jack. My turn again. Don't you look away," he said, when she tried to turn her head.

The second time was worse, because she had believed in the tenderness of his face against her breasts. Only he was on her, in her, bruising her, biting her, rattling her teeth with the force of his thrusts, until she got her hands around his throat.

"Stop raping me, you fucking psycho," she said through clenched teeth.

To her surprise, he stopped. Under her hands he swallowed and said, "You do that and I'll fuck you any way you want."

"How about like you're not trying to kill me?"

He smiled at that, closed his eyes for a moment and began to stroke into her slowly. He couldn't maintain that control and she couldn't keep her hands tight enough on his neck. Going faster, grinding at her, he kept bringing his hand up to try to tighten her grip.

"Harder."

"I can't."

He growled and rolled over, bringing her on top of him. She looked down at him in shock, her hands going to his chest to keep her balance.

"Use a blood choke, takes less effort," he said. He took her hands and brought them to his throat, guiding them to his jugular and carotid. "You remember how. I taught you that."

"Not for this," she said.

She had never been in that position. Not with him. Not with anyone. Always under someone, always being used. It felt awkward but promising until he brought his hands to her hips, pushing and pulling to thrust against her.

"Wait," she said, ignored his grunt of annoyance. She lifted herself, shifting from her knees to her feet. When she squatted, she used those muscles she had gained for birth and drew him into her slowly, inch by inch. He dug his fingers into her hips, trying to make her move against him, but she stood up on the bed, stood over him in anger.

"If you want me to be on top, let me do it."

He scowled but gave her a grudging nod. When she squatted again, he only rested his hands on her knees to spread her legs wider, to watch her steady descent onto him. Once he was in her, she put her hands back to his throat and began to pump against him, steadily finding the rhythm of it. Rocked forward against his cock and rolled her hips between slow strokes. Slower than he ever did it.

"Squeeze harder," he moaned, stroking his hands up her legs but not trying to force a rhythm.

"I can't."

"Put your body weight into it. Hard as you can." He pressed his hands over hers, squeezing.

"But what if—what if I do it too hard?"

"You won't do it too hard. You don't think a nuclear warhead would kill me, and you're worried you're gonna hurt me with those soft little hands?"

He brought them to his mouth, kissed the palms, and returned them to his neck, saying, "Look, I'll stop you if it's too hard. I figure one of two things will happen. You manage to choke me out and I'll be out for a while. No harm. Or the option I'm hoping for: you choke me as hard as you can and I'm gonna cum like a bomb going off."

She did what he said, leaning forward on his throat, compressing his vein and artery. Put her weight into the act of choking him, even while she gave herself up to the pleasure of having control of his cock in her. She bore down on him, moved against him, mindless in the pursuit of ecstasy. When his hands on her knees began to shake and then fell to his sides, she hesitated but, glancing at him, found him watching her with heavy-lidded eyes. His face was almost purple, but he was smiling.

The pressure of her hands waxed and waned with every stroke, harder as she raised herself, lighter as she lowered herself. Back and forth until the end, when she ground against him, pressed heavily on his throat and his cock together.

Her pleasure was the way he had described his own: detonation. Heat and pressure and piercing shrapnel. She panted and strained, clutched him deep in her, where she ached. Under her, he grasped at the bars of the headboard, thrust up hard against her, his whole body trembling.

When she released his throat, he coughed and groaned, "Holy fuck, Jack."

She lay on top of him, enjoying the pleasure he'd taken so often, of being exhausted and resting on the warmth of another person. He ran his hand up and down her back, smoothed her hair, kissed the crown of her head.

She returned the tenderness, pressed her lips to his neck, where the marks of her fingers were still livid but already fading. She kissed him again and marveled at his pleasure in it: "I wonder if it reminds you of having your umbilical chord wrapped around your neck, if that's why you like it?"

Silence, into which she blurted, "Oh, shit, don't answer that. I can't believe I said that."

He laughed, cleared his throat, and said, "I like it because having your hands around my throat makes me cum really hard. You know, baby, you got some kinky fucking ideas."

"It's your kink."

"I never let anybody choke me before. You started it."

"Only I didn't mean it to be sexual. I was trying to hurt you," she said.

"Turns me on when you try to hurt me."

She buried her face in his neck, breathing him in, and gave him an experimental lick. He tasted salty. Her stomach growled.

"You need to eat. You want a steak?" he said.

"Maybe I'll have some ice cream." She rose on her hands and knees.

"I'll get it." He lifted her off him and padded toward the kitchen. She waited for the cooler light to come on, but it didn't. Of course, no light in his cooler.

"Hey, Boo-Boo," he said softly.

"Is he still asleep?"

"Yeah, but should I shut the door? I don't want him to be scarred or something, listening to us fuck."

"That's so thoughtful of you," she said in a dry voice. Riddick closed the kitchen door as he came back, which was a little threatening.

He lay down on the bed, brought the little ice cream carton to rest in the middle of his chest, opened it, and spooned some out.

"Lie down. Put your head on my shoulder," he said.

Only when she obeyed did he give her the mouthful of ice cream. It went in smoothly sweet, but the pomegranate was tart on the sides of her tongue, made her mouth water. She swallowed it and said, "I can feed myself."

"No. There's this thing you do when I hold the spoon and you lick the ice cream that I like."

He gave her another bite, but kissed her and made her share it. Fed her and kissed her, just like that first night. After a few bites, she said, "You know what would be good? Some water. I'm thirsty."

"In a minute. Right now we got business to discuss."

"What kind of business?"

"You getting off on choking me and not saying my name. You did promise to say my name if I made you cum," he said.

"You didn't keep your promise. Plus I made me cum. You only helped. Also I forgot it." It made her throat a little tight, wondering if she'd be punished for all that insolence. Instead, he gave her a big scoop of ice cream just for herself.

"You forgot my name?"

"I forgot to say it. That'd be some orgasm to make me forget your name," she mumbled with her mouth full.

He pushed up on an elbow, rolled toward her, lifting the ice cream off his chest and setting it behind her. He looked at her intently.

"I don't get you, Jack. I think about you all the time and I can't figure you out. You came here, knowing I probably wasn't going to be nice. Most the time I don't even want to be nice. There's this sound you make right when I first hurt you or scare you that scratches a serious itch for me. After, I'm usually sorry I did it, but while I'm doing it, it's so fucking sweet. So, why didn't you stay away as long as you could?"

"I don't know," she said, but she knew it was the same reason she had gone after him as a teenager. Abandoned safety for chaos. "I missed you."

"You missed me?" He smiled and then the jarring cold of the ice cream carton made contact with her bare buttocks.

She gasped, fumbled behind herself to stop him. He pulled it away, but used his elbow to hike her leg up over him, and pressed the cold between her thighs, directly against her vulva. Her voice caught in her throat. He laughed as she slapped him and tried to wriggle free, but he held the ice cream against her, making her shiver until her diaphragm hitched from the shock of it.

"That sound. That little hiccup sound," he said as he pulled the carton away.

"I was going to eat that ice cream, you dick," she muttered and squeezed her hands between her thighs.

"Still totally edible." To demonstrate, he retrieved the spoon from under her and ate a bite. "A little melted. Hot cunt sundae. Did that hurt? I didn't actually mean for that to hurt."

"No, it's just cold. You know, because it's frozen," she said and grudgingly accepted the bite of ice cream he offered.

He reached over her to put the carton and spoon on the nightstand, before pulling her against him and pressing his hand between her legs. For several minutes he simply held it there, as he spooned against her back.

"Is that better?"

"A little," she said. His hand was hot.

"What about this?" He began rubbing her and then plunged his fingers deep into her, made her shudder. She squeezed her thighs around his hand to still it. He didn't insist, went back to petting her.

He pressed his face into her hair and nuzzled against her, inhaling. From there he moved on to her neck, giving her soft, languorous kisses from her hairline to her shoulders. At first, it made all the hair on her body stand up and then she subsided into the comforting pleasure of it. He paused at the freshly scabbed bite mark in the curve of her shoulder, kissing it and then licking it.

"I'll get the laser in a bit and clean that for you."

"Maybe at the same time you get me some water?"

"Okay," he said with a sigh and got out of bed.

When he started to pull on his pants, she sat up and said, "Please don't put them on yet. I like you better without them."

He dropped them and looked at her curiously. The yellow light under the bed illuminated him from below, gilded his muscles, made him god-like in that mundane act of getting ready to go into the kitchen for a glass of water. For an instant, her gaze came to rest on the scar on his belly. She quickly glanced away, but knew she had been caught, when he rested his knee on the bed and tilted her face toward him.

Ruined just like that, she thought, her throat going tight with tears. She didn't dare meet his gaze, and in preparation for the blow, she tried to relax.

He didn't hit her. Instead, he took her hand and held it to the old wound. Pressed her palm tightly between his hand and his belly.

"You know me," he said. "You're the only person who knows me. The only one who ever has. I trust you with that. You understand?"

It was a confession, an apology, a declaration of love, a plea for forgiveness. She nodded.

When he let her hand go and turned toward the kitchen, she said, "Wait. Where's your knife?"

He frowned, but picked his pants up off the floor. Pulling the shiv out of his belt, he offered it to her handle first. His t-shirt lay crumpled at the foot of the bed and she took it in her other hand, turning it over until she found the hem. When she cut into it, ripped it away, he said, "What are you doing?"

"You'll see. Give me your hand. The left one."

He looked at her with suspicion, but he offered it to her.

From the raw edge of the shirt, she teased out a loose thread and pulled several feet of it free. Before he could protest, she wrapped it around his wrist and tied it. Unraveling more of the shirt, she gave him some slack. He could go as far as there was thread to play out, but he was tethered to the other end in her hands.

"What's this for?" he said.

"To help you find your way back. So you don't get lost."

"I'm just going to the kitchen. I think I'll be okay."

He tugged at the thread.

"To remind you. I know you won't always come back to me in this moment. Plenty of times you're going to come back to a bad place and bring my monsters with you. I—I accept that. I'll try to forgive you for that. I'm trying to forgive you for that."

"You are?"

She looked into his eyes and saw that human thing: capable of being wounded, capable of being healed, exposed, defenseless. It frightened her, knowing how much he must hate that feeling, but she forced herself to finish.

"I am trying to forgive you and that's why tonight I need you to come back to me right here. Not some other place. I know how many dark corridors there are inside you, places for you to get lost in. I don't want you to come back through one of them."

"What do you know about my dark places?"

"You carried me with you, Riddick. I've seen your soul naked and raw. I saw it from the inside."

He didn't close himself up, but looked into her eyes for so long she went from hope to terror to calm again.

"Pretty black in there?" he said.

"Not as completely black as you think. You've got a few good places in there. Come back to me in one of them."

His gaze dropped to the shiv lying on the bed next to her leg. She waited, resigned, for him to take the knife and cut the thread. He held his bound hand out to her.

"Tie it tighter. Make sure it doesn't come off."

* * *

I'm standing in the kitchen getting Jack her glass of water. Boo-Boo's still asleep, having a dream. His little mouth working, hands clenching. Probably dreaming about Jack's tits. I don't blame him. I've wasted a whole lotta hours of the day doing that.

I love how she looks when she cums, at least as much, maybe even more than I love how she looks when I hurt her. She frowns so hard she looks like she's trying to do complicated math, right before her eyes go as starry as the inside of my head. And the completely vicious way she twists her hips when she convulses on my cock, like the only reason I have one is to get her off. I think about that until I realize the water is running over the edge of the glass, over my hand.

When I reach to turn off the faucet, I see the string around my wrist. She says she saw inside my soul and I don't doubt that. I see it in her eyes all the time. So if she says she's going to guide me out of the black places, I believe her.

Anyway, she's the only one who can forgive me. If that helps her do it, doesn't matter if it's just a crazy idea.

As I pour off some of the water, I feel this polite tug on the thread. In a hopeful little voice, Jack calls out, "Would you really cook a steak for me, if I wanted one?"

"Sure, Pippi. How raw do you want it?" I say.

"Kinda. With butter?"

When I move toward the stove, she unravels some more thread to make sure I can come back.

* * *

**A/N:** So we reach the end. Riddick at last consummates all his possible relationships with Jack. She is daughter, wife, mother, sister. Whether she can forgive him, I'll leave that up to your sensibilities. I believe that forgiveness is not about the extremity of cruelty, but about how badly forgiveness is needed. We forgive because **we** need to, or because the other person needs us to. It explains why it can often be easier to forgive truly terrible things and impossible to forgive the little petty daily slights. How a survivor of Auschwitz is able to forgive the guards who tormented him, but divorces his wife over a single act of infidelity.

Perhaps you were hoping for something kinder, but this is what I have to offer.

Some of you were troubled by the fact that Jack seems to occasionally get some pleasure out of Riddick's cruelty, and she clearly does here. Although this is fiction, keep in mind that masochists aren't born. They're made. Sometimes by a random encounter between pain and pleasure--like a little boy getting aroused rubbing against his mother's leg while she spanks him. That one conjunction of the two things can have lifelong effects on that little boy's perception of pleasure. Similarly, people who have long-term exposure to the forced intersection between pain and pleasure, often have difficulty untangling those two sensations, or they may cease to have a sense of differentiation between them. Victims of sexual abuse not infrequently incorporate their abuse into their future erotic experiences. For some that's permanently damaging, for some it's helpful--it allows them to own the experience, to be in control of those memories.

As for the baby's name...well, in my universe, he goes on being named Boo-Boo. After all, what do you name the son of the world's worst mass murderer and his favorite rape victim? Eventually, the news shows will refer to him as Richard B. Riddick, Jr., but in his personal life, he'll always be Boo-Boo.

If you're interested, I'm going to post an additional chapter of reader's notes, for those of you who were curious about the various references to mythology and tarot.


	18. Reader's Notes

What follows here are some notes about the infrastructure to this story. For the fun of it, I tried to set the plot of the story on the major arcana of the tarot deck. Obviously, considerations of pacing, plot and character development meant that it didn't always work perfectly, but this is a rough outline to my intentions in that arena. I've also provided some quick info on the various mythological and literary elements I incorporated. If they help you enjoy the story more, read on. If they don't, no harm in skipping.

* * *

**Chapter One: The Magician**

Riddick is the Magician, in control, creating his own reality. This card can also represent the abuse of power, which Riddick is clearly engaged in. Like a magician, he harnesses dark forces to contravene nature, using his powers to defy death and bring Jack back to life.

_Mythological_: Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, the Greek goddess of fertility. Hades, the god of the Underworld, saw Persephone and fell in love with her. Knowing she would never accept him willingly, he kidnapped her and raped her. To mark his claim on her, to make her his. He kept her prisoner, while Demeter tried to find her. The earth fell dormant while Demeter mourned, until an arrangement was made for Persephone to spend part of the year with Demeter and part of the year with Hades. Of course, Jack doesn't have a mother to come looking for her. Riddick subsumes the role of mother, giving birth to Jack in order to possess her. In a little twist, Riddick actually drags Jack out of death into life to do it, as opposed to Hades stealing Persephone from life and taking her into death.

* * *

**Chapter Two: The High Priestess**

Jack has hidden knowledge of mysterious things. She intuits truths that Riddick would rather keep secret and uses that knowledge to wield power over him. She is duality: strength and weakness together. She is subject to his whims, but she can see into him or she can "unsee" him. She defies him even while she submits to him.

* * *

**Chapter Three: The Empress**

The Empress is mother, protector, nurturer. In the face of Riddick's destruction, Jack is mother to the whole world. Her tenderness toward humanity gives her strength over him, because she feels more than he does. She is prepared to sacrifice, in the same way she sacrificed herself for him. He forces her to fight him, but ultimately it is her will to save the people on Oburnos, her maternal urge that triumphs, not physical force.

_Mythological_: Jack as Demeter, trying to rescue Persephone from Hades' clutches.

* * *

**Chapter Four: The Emperor**

Riddick as the Minister of Defense pulls the strings, exerts his power over others, including the Helion Council, including Jack. With absolute power comes absolute corruption. Only from a position of power does Riddick feel like he can be compassionate to Jack.

* * *

**Chapter Five: The Hierophant**

The Hierophant is the mystic in the dark cave. Riddick sees all, watching Jack on surveillance, watching her while she sleeps. He controls her interaction with the doctor, making himself her protector. He gives or takes freedom, returns Jack to the reality that he controls, tearing her away from the lofty reality that Aereon has been creating for her.

_Mythological_: Persephone dragged back to the Underworld, where Hades attempts to ply her with ice cream after he rapes her.

* * *

**Chapter Six: The Lovers**

Just as the card says, it represents a bond between two people. In this chapter, it is more about what that bond looks like to others. Peering in from the outside, the news readers struggle to evaluate the nature of their bond: lovers, master-slave, siblings, parent-child, violator-violated. All the bonds that Riddick has created between them. The card can be both a positive aspect of a pairing or the pain of a mismatched pairing.

Other: Foucault writes about the concept of the "panopticon" in _Discipline and Punish_. A system for controlling criminals, a panopticon prison would allow a single jailer to monitor the prisoners at all times. Jeremy Bentham, who invented the idea, described it as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example." Jack is in the panopticon—constantly watched by the curious public and more importantly by Riddick, who consumes her with his dark-seeing gaze and obtains power over her in that way. The panopticon also has echoes of an omniscient god. The god who watches everything you do. Riddick is Jack's dark god, observing and evaluating her actions.

* * *

**Chapter Seven: The Chariot**

A symbol of progress, movement toward a goal, the Chariot has a negative side as well: the journey toward the wrong goal, overcoming obstacles that exist for a reason. Riddick wants to possess Jack in a way no one else has or can. He is not the first man to rape her, but he's intent that he'll be the last, and the one who blots out all the other rapes. His goal is to make her feel as much for him as he does for her, even if her feelings become the mirror of his. Hatred to match his obsessive love.

_Mythological_: Jack as Prometheus, chained to the stone, bodily penetrated, like Prometheus having his liver plucked out by Zeus' eagle over and over. Punishment for the crime of defying a wrathful god, of trying to protect humanity. (Prometheus stole fire for them, but Jack's betrayal is that she loves humanity more than she loves Riddick.)

Jack as Jesus Christ, her arms and legs pinned, the spear thrust into her side. Ushering in an age of kindness, so that humanity doesn't have to live in the clutches of the wrathful Old Testament God. Sacrificing herself for the fan club president.

* * *

**Chapter Eight: Strength**

Jack may be physically weak, unable to protect herself from Riddick, but she has strength to defy him. She is strong enough to survive what he does to her. She has shown herself strong for everyone else, but here she also has strength for herself. Riddick's strength is physical and mystical. He is the dragon in the cave, old and dangerous with secretive rituals. I made Jack weak after her trip through death, because it would be easy for Riddick to admire and love someone physically strong, someone with his animal nature. He has to come to grips with her weakness. To see what strength is.

_Mythological_: Riddick in his bath as Poseidon, the god of the oceans. Remember that—it's coming back in Chapter Seventeen.

* * *

**Chapter Nine: The Hermit**

The Hermit carries the light in the darkness, a lonely figure, one that can either withdraw into isolation or can bring enlightenment to others. Jack is both. She wants to withdraw from people, but when she is forced into their company, she brings insight. She reminds them of the nature of the sacrifice she has made willingly. A reminder that even the loftiest principles often must be built on ugly practicalities.

Other: This is where the story really connects to Ursula K. LeGuin's _The Ones Who Walk away from Omelas_. If you haven't read it, you need to, but here's a brief synopsis: a perfect society, where everyone is happy and life is good. Except that in the basement of a public building, the people of Omelas keep a child in misery and hunger. The child is the sacrifice upon which their beautiful society is built. Most of the people in Omelas accept this, but some walk away, although it's not clear from the story exactly what this entails. In my opinion all societies are built on this agreement: we agree to be happy knowing our happiness is predicated on the suffering of someone else. We are able to eat steak dinners, because someone else is starving to death.

In this chapter, Jack steps out of her dirty basement to remind the people of Helios that she exists, that their safety and happiness is built on her misery. The ambassador, Tilnos, wants to act as though he would "walk away from Omelas," but in the end, he bows to Riddick, serves Riddick, and so accepts that his happiness depends on Jack's suffering.

* * *

**Chapter Ten: The Wheel of Fortune**

Life is change. We move through cycles. Life becomes death. Pain becomes joy. Even Riddick can be tender. Even Jack can be brutal. Jack expects Riddick to do something cruel or destructive at the opera. Instead, he offers her pleasure. She expects him to abuse her and is surprised to find herself abusing him.

_Mythological_: Here is Persephone again. Dragged into "life" by her would-be mother figure, Aereon. In the midst of it, however, Hades returns to remind her that he has staked a claim on her. That she can't remain in the light.

* * *

**Chapter Eleven: Justice**

Justice is not the same as the law, but it has to be public to be justice. We have to witness the price paid for a crime. Depending upon who you connect with in this story, this is either the success of justice or the failure of justice. Either Riddick deserves to live, having done what Jack asked, saved Helios, saved the world, having earned the right to enjoy his sacrificial lamb. Or he deserves to die for what he's done to Jack. Riddick, too, considers justice, reflecting on what he wishes he had done to the man who raped him. In that same moment he has to consider what would be a just punishment for doing the same to Jack, even though he walked away from the assassination attempt.

* * *

**Chapter Twelve: The Hanged Man**

On a grand scale, this is all about sacrifice. No need to rehash that: Jack has been a mostly willing sacrifice all along. On a small scale, the Hanged Man is about trading one thing for another. Here, Jack submits to the pregnancy, agrees to bear Riddick's child in exchange for a reprieve from her other sacrifice. If she will have the baby and raise it, she can be free from him. Riddick makes his own rare sacrifice here: to have a son, to have an alter ego who can be loved and be happy, he is giving up Jack.

_Mythological_: No need for neon signs. Like the Virgin Mary, impregnated by the wrathful Yahweh, she will labor and give birth to her own savior. She is still Persephone, too. Only without Demeter to fight for her, Jack is her own mother figure, drawing herself out of Hades' darkness into light through the generation of life.

* * *

**Chapter Thirteen: Death**

Just one death for this chapter, but an important one. Riddick learns to channel his fury, to use it only for what he wants. Death as change is more prominent. We must get rid of the old to embrace the new. Jack is no longer Riddick's "sex slave," but his "wife." Soon to be a mother. Her body is no longer occupied by Riddick, but by his baby. Her baby. Death of the old, birth of the new.

_Mythological_: Life triumphs over death. Hades is made to give way to Demeter's grief over her absent daughter. Without Persephone, Demeter refuses to give life to the world, so Hades must give her up, for a time at least.

* * *

**Chapter Fourteen: Temperance**

As the name implies, this about finding balance between extremes. For Jack, it's relearning that there is value in Riddick's lethality, the thing she first admired in him. His evil can be used for good. A little death is better than a lot of death. For Riddick, it's learning to temper his lust. Not merely because he resists the allurement of violent and sexual acts on willing victims, but because he resists the overwhelming temptation to rape Jack yet again.

_Mythological_: During the battle of Troy, Achilles killed the Amazon warrior Penthesilea, but fell in love with her as they fought. Some literary theories suggest the implication that his love for her was consummated—that he raped her corpse. (As Jack has suggested Riddick should have done, rather than bring her back from the dead.) Here is the echo of that fight/rape in Chapter Three. Jack is terrified that she is about to witness a repeat of that moment, but she's wrong. The female champion is strong, physically a suitable mate for Riddick, but Jack is Penthesilea, the beloved, loved too late. Except that instead of raping her corpse, Riddick has brought her back from death so he can rape her.

* * *

**Chapter Fifteen: The Devil**

The Devil made me do it. Usually this card shows sinners chained to the Devil in Hell. Addicted to vice and unwilling to unchain themselves. Here, it's Riddick addicted to Jack, in any way he can get her, even a sexual act that might be humiliating to another man. The Devil is also in Jack's submission. She is not an entirely willing party to his sexual overture, but she doesn't resist him. This card is often considered negative in all positions, but I think that's the Puritanical Christian view of vice creeping in. If other cards can be reversed, let the Devil be positive in reversal. Vice is pleasure. Babies are untainted by 'morality' and as a result are very sensual creatures. Their hands are uncalloused, alive to sensation and they love to pet and stroke while they nurse, and don't merely nurse for sustenance but for the physical pleasure of tasting and licking their mothers' breasts. They not infrequently experience infantile arousal at the same time. So Boo-Boo is experiencing what will later be looked on as vice, but is now simply his first experience with physical pleasure. Similarly, Jack and Riddick are experiencing a rare mutual pleasure.

_Mythological_: In the Bible, after Ruth's husband dies, she promises to go wherever Naomi, her mother-in-law, goes. To be her family. At Naomi's instigation to get Ruth a new husband, she goes to Naomi's kinsman, Boaz. Following her instructions, Ruth uncovers Boaz' feet while he's napping and lies down at them. When Boaz awakes, she asks him to "cover her with his garment." And so, Boaz does. Later he marries her. In Hebrew there are distinct sexual overtones to "uncovering the feet," and my rabbi interprets this as a poetic way of saying that Ruth uncovered Boaz' genitals and lay down with him. Thereby ensuring that he would "cover her with his garment"—take her as his wife, make her part of his community and family, offer protection to Ruth and Naomi. Here, it's reversed, with Riddick uncovering Jack's feet (already a reversal of him putting her shoes on when he finds out she's pregnant), and lying down at them. Not just lying down at them, but pleasuring himself with them. Jack is his Naomi—the one whom he has taken as family, whom he has followed across the universe to be with. Jack is his Boaz—the one who has ushered him into society, made him part of a community, created a family for him.

* * *

**Chapter Sixteen: The Tower**

More chaotic and destructive than even Death, the Tower is upheaval, the end of stasis, radical and violent change, not the natural ending of Death. It often represents a choice to be made. Jack has been living a falsehood, an expectation that she can become someone or something else. Her brush with the Minister of Education's fear reminds her that Riddick has marked her for all time. In the eyes of other people, she will always be his, always be polluted by him. Just as she finds her sexual pleasure polluted by memories of him. When the illusion is torn away, Jack will have to change, even if she doesn't want to.

_Mythological_: Persephone has come back to earth, brought spring, brought forth life, but Hades is standing at the door of her garden, calling her to return to the Underworld, reminding her of her obligation to him.

* * *

**Chapter Seventeen: The Star**

Hope in the midst of darkness and travail. New possibilities. For Jack, of course, it will never be completely smooth sailing. As she says, she accepts that Riddick is never going to be a nice guy. He is still her monster, and he's going to hurt her again, but there's hope that he will try to be better, will learn to mitigate his darker urges. Hope that she'll find balance with him, even if it's by embracing some of those dark urges. In the tarot deck I use, the Star is represented by Pandora's box. All the evil of the world released, but at the bottom: hope.

_Mythological_: Persephone eats the pomegranate ice cream of the Underworld, binding herself to Hades. But the red and white of the ice cream is also blood and milk, the two fluids that give women power. So maybe Jack is binding Riddick with her milk and blood, her motherhood and fertility.

Here is also where we go back to Poseidon, who gave a perfect white bull to King Minos, who was supposed to sacrifice the bull, but kept it for himself. As revenge, Poseidon made Minos' queen, Pasiphae, fall in love with the bull. Hidden in a mechanical cow, Pasiphae consummated her lust for the bull. Born out of that union was the Minotaur, whom Pasiphae nursed until he became violent: the animal they all knew he was. Then he was locked in the labyrinth and fed on innocent victims. His sister, Ariadne, was ultimately his downfall. She helped the hero Theseus find his way into the labyrinth to kill the monster, and back out to safety with a ball of thread.

For Jack as Ariadne, there is no conquering hero to slay the Minotaur and rescue her. Her would-be Theseus is a coward (Tilnos and the Minister of Education) or already dead (the soldier who wanted to protect her.) Without Theseus, Jack is alone in the labyrinth with the Minotaur, her brother. She binds Riddick with her thread, so he can find his way back to that moment when he was still human, when he nursed at his mother's/Jack's breast. To save herself from the Minotaur, she has to save him from the labyrinth.

Riddick is correct when he says, "Holy fuck." That sex act is ancient and sacred, goes back to any number of cultures. The Spring Maiden in a position of power, receiving the seed of the Spring Lord, who will be sacrificed to fertilize the fields. Among the Celts, the preferred method for dispatching the willing sacrifice was with a post-coital garrote, close enough to Jack choking Riddick during sex.


End file.
